178 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Finally it leaves this track and develops in numerous directions 

 like straws of a sheaf. Many potential phases of life are abandoned by 

 each actualized tendency. Many end in blind alleys, but it is a real 

 highway that leads through mammals to man. Societies of bees and 

 ants are stereotyped. In human society there is less equilibrium. 

 The general directions come from life, but difficulties met on the way 

 demand adaptation. No general definition perfectly distinguishes the 

 plant from the animal. The group must be defined not by possession 

 of certain characters, but by its tendency to emphasize them. Vege- 

 tables are distinguished from animals by their power of creating 

 organic matter out of mineral elements drawn directly from earth, 

 air and water. The movements of animals have greater frequency 

 and variety than those of vegetables. Between mobility and con- 

 sciousness there is an obvious relationship. Consciousness appears 

 as choice. The nervous system is a mechanism of choice. Conscious- 

 ness appears as cause and effect of movement. There seems little 

 volition in vegetables; but what corresponds to the will of an animal 

 is in the vegetable the power of bending the energy of the solar radia- 

 tion, when it uses it to break the connection of carbon with oxygen in 

 carbonic acid. Sensibility may be said to appear faintly in the pecu- 

 liar impressionability of its chlorophyl light. The same impetus 

 which has led the animal to give itself nerves and nerve -centers must 

 have ended in the plant in the chlorophyllian function. 



At the root of life, there is an effort to graft on to the mechanical 

 forces of matter the largest possible degree of indetermination or 

 freedom. 



Life, advancing through matter, makes use to this end of all the 

 stored-up energy it finds on its path. The different kingdoms of life 

 store up energy, and each advance depends on this fact. The vege- 

 tables find stored-up energy in earth, air and water; the animals in 

 the vegetables; the higher animals in the lower. Vegetables and 

 animals represent the two great divergent paths of the elan vital. 

 Yet they both spring from a common root, and each tries to develop 

 one of the good features of that from which both spring. 



What constitutes animality is just the faculty of utilizing a releas- 



