The Physical Basis of Mind: Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.Lewes, George Henry
Philosophy
The Physical Basis of Mind: Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.
Lewes, George Henry
Mind and body; Psychophysiology
should we hesitate to accept Cohn’s discovery of the muscles in certain
plants,[77] we cannot deny that plants exhibit Contractility; and
should we refuse to interpret as Sensibility the phenomena exhibited by
the Sensitive Plants, we cannot deny that they present a very striking
analogy to the phenomena of Sensibility exhibited by animals.
133. It is unnecessary to continue this enumeration, which might easily
be carried into minute detail. A chapter of such resemblances would
only burden the reader’s mind, without adding force to the conclusion
that a surprising community in Substance and Life-history must be
admitted between Plants and Animals. This granted, we turn to the
differences, and find them no less fundamental and detailed. Chemistry
tells us nothing of the differences in the protoplasms from which
animals and plants arise; but that initial differences must exist is
proved by the divergence of the products. The vegetable cell is not
the animal cell; and although both plants and animals have albumen,
fibrine, and caseine, the _derivatives_ of these are unlike. Horny
substance, connective tissue, nerve tissue, chitine, biliverdine,
creatine, urea, hippuric acid, and a variety of other products of
evolution or of waste, never appear in plants; while the hydrocarbons
so abundant in plants are, with two or three exceptions, absent from
animals. Such facts imply differences in elementary composition; and
this result is further enforced by the fact that where the two seem
to resemble, they are still different: the plant protoplasm forms
various cells, but never forms a cartilage-cell or nerve-cell; fibres,
but never a fibre of elastic tissue; tubes, but never a nerve tube;
vessels, but never a vessel with muscular coatings; solid “skeletons,”
but always from an organic substance (_cellulose_), not from phosphates
and carbonates. In no one character can we say that the plant and the
animal are identical; we can only point throughout the two kingdoms to
a great similarity accompanying a radical diversity.
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