through and by means of the whole, are individuals. The individual stands in relation to other individuals and to the inorganic world. It is a manifestation of energy acting as conservative of its own individuality, and destructive of other individualities or of inorganic aggregates that form its environment. It assimilates other beings to itself and digests them, or imposes its own form on them and makes them organic parts of itself; or, on the other hand, it eliminates portions from itself, returning to the inorganic what has been a part of itself.

§ 103. Individuality, therefore, is not a mere thing, but an energy manifesting itself in things. In the case of the plant there is this unity of energy, but the unity does not exist for itself in the form of feeling. The animal feels, and, in feeling, the organic energy exists for itself, all parts coming to a unity in this feeling, and realizing an individuality vastly superior to the individuality manifested in the plant.

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That which is dependent upon external circumstances, and is only a circumstance itself, is not capable of education. Only a "self" can be educated; and a "self" is a conscious unity-a self-activity," a being which is through itself, and not one that is made by surrounding conditions. Again, in order that a being possess a capacity for education, it must have the ability to realize within itself what belongs to its species or race. If an acorn could develop itself so that it could realize not only

its own possibility as an oak, but its entire species, and all the varieties of oaks within itself, and without losing its particular individuality, it would possess the capacity for education. But an acorn in reality can not develop its possibility without the destruction of its own individuality. The acorn vanishes in the oak tree, and the crop of acorns which succeeds is not again the same acorn, except in kind or species. "The species lives, but the individual dies," in the vegetable world. So it is in the animal world. The brute lives his particular life, unable to develop within himself the form of his entire species, and still less the form of all animal life. And yet the animal possesses self-activity in the powers of locomotion, senseperception, feeling, emotion, and other elementary shapes. Both animal and plant react against surroundings, and possess more or less power to assimilate what is foreign to them. The plant takes moisture and elementary inorganic substances, and converts them into nutriment wherewith to build its cellular growth. The animal has not only this power of nutrition, which assimilates its surroundings, but also the power of feeling, which is a wonderful faculty. Feeling reproduces within the organ ism of the animal the external condition; it is an ideal reproduction of the surroundings. The environment of the plant is seized upon and appropriated, being changed into the form of sap for the nourishment of that plant; but there is no ideal reproduction of the environment in the form of feeling, as in the animal.

CHAPTER XXI.

Psychologic Functions of Plants and Animals compared.

§ 104. THE plant grows and realizes by its form or shape some phase or phases of the organic energy that constitutes the individuality of the plant. Roots, twigs, buds, blossoms, fruits, and seeds, all together manifest or express that organic energy, but they lack thorough mutual dependence, as compared with the parts of the animal who feels his unity in each part or limb. The individuality of the plant is comparatively an aggregate of individualities, while the animal is a real unity in each part through feeling, and hence there is no such independence in the parts of the animal as in the plant.

§ 105. Feeling, sense-perception, and locomotion characterize the individuality of the animal, although he retains the special powers which made the plant an organic being. The plant could assimilate or digest— that is to say, it could react on its environment and impress it with its own form, making the inorganic into vegetable cells and adding them to its own struc

ture. Feeling, especially in the form of sense-perception, is the process of reproducing the environment within the organism in an ideal form.

§ 106. Sense-perception thus stands in contrast to the vegetative power of assimilation or nutrition, which is the highest form of energy in the plant. Nutrition is a subordinate energy in the animal, while it is the supreme energy of the plant. Nutrition relates to its environment only negatively and destructively in the act of assimilating it, or else it adds mechanically to the environment by separating and excreting from itself what has become inorganic. But feeling, even as it exists in the most elementary forms of sense-perception, can reproduce the environment ideally; it can form for itself, within, a modification corresponding to the energy of the objects that make up its environment. This is the essential thing to keep constantly before the mind in psychology—that feeling is not a mere passivity of the soul, but an activity which makes an internal state responsive to the external. Compared with the higher faculties, it is passive because it lacks the repeated self-activities added by reflection.

§ 107. Sentient being stands in reciprocal action with its environment, but it seizes the impression received from without and adds to it by its own activity,

so as to reconstruct for itself the external object. It receives an impression, and is in so far passive to the action of its environment; but it reacts on this by forming within itself a counterpart to the impression out of its own energy. The animal individuality is an energy that can form limits within itself. On receiving an impression from the environment, it forms limits to its own energy commensurate with the impression it receives, and thus frames for itself a perception, or an internal copy of the object. It is not a copy so much as an estimate or measure effected by producing a limitation within itself similar to the impression it has received. Its own state, as thus limited to reproduce the impression, is its idea or perception of the external environment as acting upon it.

§ 108. The plant receives impressions from without, but its power of reaction is extremely limited, and does not rise to feeling. The beginnings of such reaction in plants as develops into feeling in animals are studied by intelligent biologists with the liveliest interest, for in this reaction are seen the ascent of individuality through a discrete degree the ascent from nutrition to feeling.

§ 109. Nutrition is a process of destruction of the individuality of the foreign substance taken up from the environment, and likewise a process of impressing