396 METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION. 



sciousness, we can glance at the succession of vegetable forms. 

 The active movements of the primary stages of the x^lgae are well 

 known. After swimming actively through the water, they settle 

 down, take root, and assume the role of plants. The Aethalium, 

 swimming with the movements of a Rhizopod, has been known to 

 take food before establishing itself on the damp piles of the tan- 

 bark, where it speedily becomes a low form of fungus. The ap- 

 proximation of the lower forms of plants to animals is notorious. 

 The fungi, it is said, are the only terrestrial j)lants which live like 

 animals on organic matter, appropriating the humus of their rich 

 nidus in a state of solution. ISTow the paleontology of animals has 

 absolutely established the fact that the predecessors of all charac- 

 teristic or sioecialized ty|3es have been unspecialized or generalized 

 types, '' neither one thing nor another." It may then be regarded 

 as almost certain that the ancestors of the present higher types 

 of plants were more animal-like than they ; that the forms dis- 

 playing automatic movements were more numerous, and the diffi- 

 culty of deciding on the vegetable or animal nature of a living 

 organism greater than it is now. Hence it may be concluded that 

 *^ animal" consciousness has from time to time organized its ma- 

 chinery and then disappeared forever, leaving as result the per- 

 manent form of life which we call vegetable. But it is not to be 

 supposed that all changes of structure cease with the departure of 

 consciousness. Given spontaneous movement (i. e., growth), and 

 surrounding conditions, and the resultant product must be struct- 

 ures adapted to their surroundings, just as the plastic clay is fitted 

 to its mold. And this is essentially the distinguishing character 

 of vegetable teleology as compared with animal. In the average 

 plant we see adaptation to the conditions of unconscious nutrition ; 

 in the animal, adaptation to conditions of conscious contact with 

 the world under a great variety of conditions. 



IT. GROWTH-FORCE. 



The active processes of living beings are examples of conversion 

 of physical forces, only differing from the conversions observed to 

 take place in inorganic bodies, in the nature of the machinery 

 which exhibits them. The construction of this machinerv, as in 

 its use when finished, involves a conversion of force, the resultant 

 consisting of the attraction of nutritious material in definite new 

 directions. This determinate attraction has been regarded as a 

 distinct force, to which the name of bathmic or growth force has 



