﻿.IVING PLANTS 



other automatic movements maybe similarly 

 explained. In reference to the involuntary 

 movements of the heart and other viscera, 

 Cope has suggested that they "were organ- 

 ized in primitive and simple animals in suc- 

 cessive states of consciousness, which stimu- 

 lated voluntary movements, which ultimately 

 became rhythmic" (Organic Evolution, 511). 

 He goes on to observe that "the structure of 

 the infusoria offers the structural conditions 

 for such a process," and proceeds to illustrate 

 how the contractile vesicle might have thus 

 arisen, and from it the mammalian heart. 

 But we need not follow him. 



Lester F. Ward has said that "pleasure and 

 pain are the conditions to the existence of 

 plastic organisms, pleasure leading to those 

 acts which insure nutrition and reiDroduction, 

 and pain to those which will insure safety" 

 (Psychic Factors of Civilization). Cope has 

 elaborated theideainto a well maintained hy- 

 pothesis, which he calls archaesthetism. He 

 defines it thus: "It maintains that conscious- 

 ness, as well as life, preceded organism, and 

 has been the primum mobile in the creation 

 of organic structure. This conclusion also 

 flows from a due consideration of the nature 

 of life. I think it possible to show," he goes 

 on to say, "that the true definition of life is 

 energy directed by sensibility, or by a mechan- 



