The life of the plant is a continual reproduction of new individuals——a process of going out of one individual into another——so that the particular individual loses its identity, although the identity of the species is preserved. 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, cannot 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, sense-perception, 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 nutrition 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 organism of the animal the external condition; it is an ideal reproduction of the surroundings. The environment of the plant may be seized upon and appropriated in the form of sap, or in the form of carbonic acid, for the nourishment of that plant; but there is no ideal reproduction of the environment in the form of _feeling_, as in the animal. In the activity of _feeling_, the animal transcends his material, corporeal limits——lives beyond his mere body, and participates in the existence of all nature. He reproduces within himself the external. Such being the nature of the activity of _feeling_, which forms the distinguishing attribute that divides animals from plants, the question meets us at the outset, "Why is not the animal capable of education? Why can he not realize within himself his entire species or race, as man can?"