142 Literary and Philosophical Society. 



or marrow. Such organisation evidently belongs not to 

 inanimate matter ; and when we observe in vegetables, that 

 it is connected with, or instrumental to the powers of growth, 

 of self-preservation, of motion, and of seminal increase, we 

 cannot hesitate to ascribe to them a living principle. And 

 by admitting this attribute, we advance a step higher in the 

 analogy we are pursuing. 



' For the idea of life naturally implies some degree of 

 perceptivity ; and wherever perception resides, a greater or 

 less capacity for enjoyment seems to be its necessary ad- 

 junct. Indefinite and low, therefore, as this capacity may 

 be, in each single herb or tree, yet, when we consider the 

 amazing extent of the vegetable kingdom, " from the cedar 

 of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall," the aggregate of 

 happiness, produced by it, will be found to exceed our most 

 enlarged conceptions. It is prejudice only which restrains 

 or suppresses the delightful emotions resulting from the 

 belief of such a diffusion of good. And, because the framers 

 of systems have invented arrangements and divisions of the 

 works of God, to aid the mind in the pursuits of science, 

 we implicitly admit as reality what is merely artificial ; 

 and adopt distinctions, without proof of any essential 

 difference/ 



Let us compare the latest conclusions on this subject by 

 the man who of all others seems fitted best to give an 

 opinion. In his concluding remarks (see ' The Power of 

 Movement in Plants,' by Charles Darwin, LL.D., F.R.S., 

 assisted by Francis Darwin), pp. 5/1-573, he says : 



( Finally, it is impossible not to be struck with the 

 resemblance between the foregoing movements of plants 

 and many of the actions performed unconsciously by the 



