240 DR. CARUS ON THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE, 
leaves and flowers being particularly capable of secretion and ex- 
piration, but less fit for absorption. Polarity is therefore the cause 
which brings the sap into motion by reciprocal attraction and repul- 
sion from the root to the leaves and flowers, and from the leaves and 
flowers again to the root: a motion on which, moreover, the physical 
powers—which, as the condition of both these parts, we have named 
vegetative poles, namely the powers of light and gravitation—must have 
a most decided influence; since, for instance, it is a well-known fact, 
that the perspiration of plants is very different according to the degrees 
in which they are exposed or withdrawn from the light of the sun. 
But besides those active properties which contribute to the organic 
formation of plants, some of them possess a peculiar mobility, which 
seems to arise from real sensibility, and at the first glance presents a 
perfect line of demarcation between the vegetable and inorganic bodies. 
In order to have a clear insight into this fact, it is necessary to fix our 
idea of the word sensibility, as that which we would be understood to 
convey most correctly, if we say that it consists in the change operated 
by outward or inward circumstances in the feelings of a being conscious 
that it exists as a unity; consequently if we deny sensibility to the 
stone or the mineral, it is not because such a body isnot subject to the 
most various agitations and changes, but because it is merely a member 
of a higher unity, and in itself is to be considered as an individual, not 
as a true unity. In regard to the plant we may say that it has become an 
organic unity; but onaccount of the dualism (see p.235.) prevailing in its 
totality, and its being therefore bound as it were to the external world, we 
may with safety deny that it is conscious of its own unity ; for in order 
to have self-consciousness, or an internal perception of unity, there 
must be, not merely that ideal unity which belongs to organized beings 
in general, but that real manifestation of unity which arises from the 
continual action and reaction of all the organs and an organic centre. 
But such action and reaction are not to be found in the plant, in which 
each bud may be considered as a whole; so that this real unity, as 
we shall hereafter see, is possible only in the animal, in which the 
organs are connected with a unity by means of the vascular and 
nervous systems. But if we cannot suppose plants to be possessed 
-of sensibility, how can we account for their movements towards the 
light, the shrinking of the sensitive plant from the touch, the closing 
_of the Dionza by mechanical irritation, or the inclining of the stamina 
towards the stigma, and the regular embracing of extraneous bodies, 
and in definite directions, by the creeping plants, &c.? In our opinion all 
these phenomena are to be accounted for in the same way as the rota- 
tion of the earth, the motion of falling bodies, the oscillation of the 
.sea in its ebbing and flowing, the attraction and repulsion of the cork 
balls in the electrometer ; that is to say, we think that they are entirely 
the effects of external disposing causes, and therefore the consequence 
