EVOLUTION <JF LIFE. 73 



time and experience: the arts of man vary in 

 every age and in every nation, and are known 

 only to those men who have been taught; but 

 the manufactories of animals differ, in toto, from 

 those of man. No animal of the species can 

 claim the invention, and no one ever brought 

 any one improvement, or any variations from 

 the former practice ; every one of the species 

 has equal skill from the beginning, without 

 teaching, without experience, and without ha- 

 bits, and every one has its art by a kind of 

 inspiration ; not inspired with the principles or 

 rules of art, but with the ability of working it 

 to perfection, without any previous knowledge 

 of its principles, rules, or ends. 



The analogy, therefore, which exists between 

 the vital organs of animals, and the whole vege- 

 table kingdom, although it proves that the liv- 

 ing principle, by which the system of each was 

 formed, is of the same nature in all, is, never- 

 theless, distinct from it, in being destitute of 

 organs of sensation or of consciousness. The 

 actual existence of organs, not only of sensa- 

 tion, but of consciousness, in them, shows that 

 they both feel and think ; the merest worm that 

 crawls upon the surface of the earth, feels ' a 

 consciousness of pleasure and of pain, of appe- 

 tite and gratification, of security and of danger; 

 it not only seeks for the means of satisfying its 

 wants, but is conscious of the danger to which 



