Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/265

Rh life — (wherefore the doctrine of Stahl, that the soul forms its own body, if 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 precise 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 general 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 particularly 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 organism; so that if mere Feeling gives us only a knowledge of the state of our own organism, the individual 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