Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/113

 And further "Plants are totally and eternally without sensation and are devoid of the faculty for it."

In the first place Hegel says that "sensation is the specific differentiation, the distinguishing mark of the animal." Thus one of Hegel's erudite statements be comes an indubitable truth of the last instance merely by being copied into Herr Duehring's book.

In the second place we now arrive for the first time at the forms of transition between animals and plants. That these intermediate forms exist, that there are organisms concerning which we are unable to say flatly whether they are plants or animals, that we are therefore unable to fix accurately the frontiers between plant and animal life, all these things make Herr Duehring logically anxious to fix a decisively distinguishing line, which in the next breath he declares cannot be thoroughly relied on. But there is no need for us to go to the doubtful region; intermediate between plants and animals are sensitive plants which at the least contact fold their leaves or close their petals. Are insect eating plants utterly without sensation? Even Herr Duehring cannot make such an assertion without indulging in "unscientific half-poetry."

In the third place Herr Duehring is again giving free rein to his imagination when he says that sensation is psychologically existent, even when the nerve apparatus is exceedingly simple. This is found regularly among reptiles yet Herr Duehring is the first to say that they have no sensation because they have no nerves. Sensation is not necessarily bound up with nerves but it is bound up with some albuminous substance the true nature of which has not yet been discovered.

In addition, the biological knowledge of Herr Duehring becomes exceedingly evident in that he is not