ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. 69 



members. So, if sensation be a kind of con- 

 sciousness, it is not yet conscious of it, not 

 yet conscious of its consciousness, but rather 

 of its outer organism Psyche having not yet 

 won its own form. 



The Animal, having through sensation in- 

 dividualized itself as a whole in a continual 

 process, will proceed to individualize in detail 

 everything else that it does. It takes its food 

 by bits, its air by single breaths, its water by 

 mouthfuls. Thus the elements needful for its 

 life do not flow in upon it in natural masses, 

 but are first separated, divided up, individual- 

 ized by its special organs. Internally the 

 same process is continued till in the chemism 

 of the body the ultimate unit is reached, the 

 atom. But the Plant has not this peculiar 

 trait, or less decidedly; it does not breathe, 

 drink, eat in morsels, but uninterruptedly, or 

 nearly so. Its relation to Nature is more 

 immediate and unbroken, while the Animal 

 breaks Nature to pieces before accepting it, 

 and individualizes it more completely from 

 its first seizure to its last assimilation. The 

 Animal through its decisive individuality 

 tends to make all that it touches individual 

 like itself that is its primal assimilation. It 

 dares tackle and appropriates in its own way 

 the primordial forms of the Cosmos, indi- 

 vidualizing Space (in its locomotion), Time 



