REASON AND FEELING. 25 



dos, for the gratification of prejudice, or for the avoidance of the term 



- rea.son,'-" but no reasonable person will assume to say if he reasons 



from cause to tiled himself, that the same effects produced by the 



lower animals as those produced by man does not presuppose the same 



causes ari.l the exercise of the same faculties. That man possesses 



.iiru faculties in greater perfection or power than lower ani- 



. distinct moral sentiments, no one will deny ; but 



this is no evidence that lower animals do not possess reasoning 



faculties ; for the grades of perfection and powers of exercise vary as 



i;, maa ;j - they do in other animals. To deny, then, to all the 



wet animals, as it is popular and somewhat fashionable to do, all 

 powers of reasoning, is to evince in man less of those powers than he 

 claims and should be accredited for. 



But it would seem from some writers on vegetable physiology that 

 "comparisons are odious." We would not disturb the sentiments 

 which dictate such prejudices. We believe that to 



" Vindicate the ways of God to man." 



sentiments are required of a very different cast. While the dis- 

 tinctions beween organic and inorganic bodies are apparent and 

 striking, many of those between the two classes of organic beings are 

 not thus apparent. Similar phenomena, therefore, can only be referred 

 to smilar causes. It does not necessarily follow that because organs 

 produce similar functions, they are necessarily the same in organic 

 structure. Many parts of animals vary much in their organiza- 

 tion, while they perform similar functions with those differently con- 

 stituted. It is the same in plants. The organs of circulation and of 

 respiration in plants are very different from those of animals, still they 

 are admitted to perform similar functions. 



Feeling appears to be the principal distinction proposed between 

 plants and animals. The justice of this distinction, however, does 

 not appear to us apparent. Linnaeus declared his views of these dis- 

 tinctions in the following summary aphorism. " Stones grow, vege- 

 tables grow and live, and animals grow, live and feel." The senti- 

 ment of this declaration is almost universally adopted, although most 

 men confess their inability to decide where feeling begins or where it 

 ends. But stones do not grow, for it is a distinction between the 

 mineral and vegetable kingdom, that members of the former do not 

 increase in size by anything within themselves. Mere depositions 

 upon their surface is not growth. Now, that plants feel is as clear 

 and evident a proposition as that animals feel. But the inference is 

 that if feeling be allowed to plants we must allow them to possess 

 orsrans of sensation similar with those, perhaps, of animals, which 

 would indicate intelligence, a fact that few are disposed to admit, 

 3 



