Philosophy of Botany. 283 



This is the physico-mechanical provision for the accom- 

 plishment of cerebral functions, as far as our present anatom- 

 ical studies have made clear. The act itself of the conver- 

 sion of molecular motion into consciousness, as well of 

 thingfs outside of us — objective consciousness — as also of the 

 internal processes of self-consciousness in gradations of every 

 degree, is yet an unsolved problem, tempting the inventiveness 

 of the speculative mind. 



The modern monism accords the origin of the whole uni- 

 verse to an absolute Unity and Essence whose quality the hu- 

 man mind has no means of investigating, which we aim to ex- 

 press as the union of matter, motion, and mind, three essential 

 realities which never and nowhere exist separately, or as mere 

 functions of one or the other, but are coexistent and universal. 



Matter is the extended, space-filling, indestructible reality, 

 subject to gravitation, appearing in three different aggrega- 

 tions — the, solid, liquid, and gaseous — and in about seventy-six 

 elementary forms. We recognize in the atom the ultimate 

 divisibility of the chemical elements ; in the molecule the 

 limit of divisibility, without change of its chemical properties : 

 in the advance of the combination of those molecules, first, the 

 stable elements of the mineral kingdom; progressing in the 

 scale. of evolution, we advance to the multifarious and mutable 

 hydrocarbon compounds, which are the substratum of the or- 

 ganic creation, the most complex of which are the proteids 

 and albuminoids, which, while some of them may be arti- 

 ficially produced by synthesis, by still further recompounding 

 appear as protoplasma, a living, organized substance, whose 

 continuance depends on an uninterrupted exchange of its con- 

 stituent molecules by the process of nutrition and elimination, 

 and is subject to death and decay whenever this metabolism 

 is suspended while it is in an active state of growth. It has 

 been suggested by Lester Ward that the ultimate accretions 

 of albuminoids to perfect the constitutionality of protoplasm 

 is no longer dependent on chemical affinity, but follows the 

 law of molar attraction or gravitation, and constitutes mo- 

 tility. This may serve to account for their extreme instability. 

 Contractile tissue and muscular fiber follow. 



The second reality is motion, or function of the ether, con- 



