DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. DO 



higher. In things mechanical, for example, cause is but 

 a tertium quid of identity, uniting, as so far identical, two 

 things otherwise different. Thus motion is the uniting 

 identity between the billiard ball, A, here, and the 

 different billiard ball, B, there. But there is no such 

 mechanical expedient on the higher stage, life. And 1 

 know not that it would be well possible for any man to 

 find a better or more striking example in proof than 

 that which we owe to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, some dozen 

 pages on in his Zoonomia. 



There, referring to vital phenomena in a mechanical 

 regard, we find it said (and it could not possibly be more 

 neatly said), that animal motions " have no mechanical 

 proportion to their cause ; the goad of a spur on the skin 

 of a horse shall induce him to move a load of hay ! " 

 This, on the part of Erasmus, is a declaration of his 

 belief in the existence of mind, quite as much as in the 

 existence of matter, and, indeed, in the predominance of 

 mind. 1 Many of those " untenable hypotheses " of his 

 look material enough ; but still he never deserts his 

 allegiance to mind. Even in plants the chief elements 

 to him are psychical. In fact, if not already animals, 

 they are at least animally endowed. They are possessed, 

 he thinks, even of a brain. They alternately sleep and 

 wake ; they secrete, digest, have muscles ; they smell, 

 taste, touch ; they generate ; they distinguish heat, 

 moisture, light ; they must repeat their perceptions, 

 waking or dreaming, and so have ideas of the external 

 world and of their own existence ! 



Charles Darwin at least shares in his grandfather's 

 love for plants ; and like him, too, he seems to look upon 

 them as animally endowed. He asks (Life and Letters, 



1 Here, properly, of life at least to divert causality ; as might 

 have been suggested, indeed, by the difference of a dead or a live 

 finger placed in the fire. 



