HITHERTO we have left animals out of our plan, although, owing to their immense number, and their influence upon the places which they inhabit, they play a highly important part in the world. It is now time to define the place in nature which our system assigns to them. Have animals souls? Yes, in our belief, animals have souls; but among animals of all classes the soul is far from being endowed with an equal degree of activity. The activity of the soul is different in the crocodile and in the dog, in the eagle and in the grasshopper. In inferior animals, zoophytes and mollusca, the soul exists only in the condition of a germ. This germ develops itself, and becomes amplified according to the elevation of animals in the series of organic perfection. The sponge and the coral are zoophytes (animal plants). In these beings, the characteristics of animality, although they exist very positively, are obscure and hardly discernible. Voluntary motion, which is the distinctive characteristic formerly demanded for animals, is wanting in them; they are motionless, like the plants. Nevertheless, their nutrition is the same as that of animals, therefore they belong to the animal world. We cannot, however, grant to them a complete soul, but only the germ, the originating point of a soul. Among mollusca (such as marine and land shells, the oyster, the snail, &c.), the motions and the conduct of life are dictated by the will, and that suffices, in our belief, to reveal their possession of a soul, imperfect and very elementary, but certainly existent. Among articulated animals, the insects especially, will, sensibility, acts which denote reason, deliberation, and action resulting from deliberation, are numerous, and recurrent at every moment. They denote intelligence already active.