They are truly instances of the method of trial and error practised by
the lower animals.
All the above amounts to saying that there is a community of energetic
processes, of morphology, and of behaviour in animals and plants.
“Protoplasm” is the same, or much the same chemical aggregate, whether
it is contained in the cells of animals or plants. The cell, with
its nucleus, chromatic architecture, cell-inclusions, and cell-wall,
is essentially the same structure in all organisms. The complex and
specialised process of nuclear division in tissue growth, or the
series of events which constitute the acts of fertilisation of the
ovum or its plant correlative, are the same all through the organic
world. The sensori-motor system--receptor organ, nerve-fibre and
cell, and effector-motor organ--is the same all through the animal
kingdom. Alimentary canal and glands, enzymes, excretory tubules,
contractile blood-vascular apparatus--all these are structures which
are functionally the same, which are built on essentially the same
morphological plan. Life, whether it is the life of plant or animal,
makes use of the same material means of perpetuating itself on the
earth and avoiding the descent of matter towards complete inertia.
Absolute dissimilarities, dissimilarities such as those between atoms
of hydrogen and oxygen, or between a point and a straight line, or
between rest and motion, do not exist between the different categories
of entities that make up the organic world. Yet differences do exist,
and must we conclude that because these differences are not absolute
ones, because they are differences of degree, and not of kind, they
are not essential, are not differences at all? Must we say, for
instance, that although an animal is a much more efficient machine
than a gas-engine (in the sense of efficiency as understood by the
engineer), there is really no difference between them, that they are
both thermo-dynamic mechanisms, since in both energy is dissipated?
Ought we to say that, because the last steps in the formation of urea
in the animal body are synthetic ones, there is really no difference
between the nature of the energy-transformations that occur in the
animal and the plant modes of metabolism? Ought we to say that,
because a dog may sometimes act intelligently and a man instinctively,
psychically they are similarly-behaving organisms? Surely this amounts
to saying that, because things are not absolutely different, they are
the same; and surely the mode of reasoning is a vicious one!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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