THEIR LIFE AND AFFINITY. 253 
chical life*—(wherefore the doctrine of Stahl, that the soul forms its 
own body, ¢f properly understood, is very admissible,—and we hope 
soon to have the opportunity more fully to develop these views, for 
which we have not space here, and to confirm the above propositions 
by more convincing proofs. For the present we have only to observe 
in general, having already spoken of the manner in which animal re- 
action depends on muscular motion (see p. 237), how far the more pre- 
cise independence and the more certain self-consciousness of the animal 
give rise to the individual forms of sensation. 
In the plant, in which irritation causes re-action at the point where it 
acts, and the single parts of which are independent, but not the whole, 
irritability (belonging to all the parts) must be general; and this gene- 
ral irritability (raised into a sensation only through the relation of each 
irritating action to the whole,) is possessed by the animal in common 
with the plant, and it is therefore included in the comprehensive term 
feeling. But since in the animal the sensation of each individual part 
is related to the whole, this sensation can be concentrated and particu- 
larly developed, on certain individual points, without injury, or rather 
with advantage to the whole; wherefore we see that the different sides 
of perception turned toward the outer world, correspond in number 
with the different organic systems turned toward the outer world, and 
with the qualitative influences of various kinds acting upon the organ- 
ism; so that if mere Feeling gives us only a knowledge of the state of 
our own organism, the zmdividual senses of hearing, seeing, smelling, 
tasting, touching, &c. afford us a clearer consciousness of the external 
world, through a local alteration of our own condition. 
If in closing these observations, intended to show the progressive 
development of animal life out of the life of the lower kingdoms of 
nature, we look to the changes which animal life operates upon them, 
facts present themselves worthy of the most serious consideration. We 
have seen how the vegetative life is nourished by inorganic life, and 
how vegetation in its turn operates changes in many ways upon the 
surface of the earth, and even on the atmosphere. So again we find 
that the animal kingdom maintains the most active relation with the 
vegetable life and with the elements of the earth and of the air. We see 
coral rocks and islands raised from the bottom of the sea by animated 
beings apparently insignificant, which, existing before the creation of 
Adam, now elevate their lofty tops as mountains of the continent ; we 
see the animal kingdom penetrating into parts of the earth seemingly 
impenetrable to all living creatures+ ; moreover, we observe that here 
also, where, according to the eternal laws of nature, the highest is 
* [ psychischen Leben, Germ. } ? 
+ See on this subject the observations which G. R. Treviranus (Biologie, 
vol. ii. p. 7) has collected from the instructive reports of other naturalists. 
