n 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?"

In order to settle this fundamental question, we must study carefully
the scope and limits of this activity, which we have termed "Feeling,"
and which is known under many names--as, sensation, sensibility,
sensitivity, sense-perception, intuition, and others.

Education aims to develop the mind as intellect and will. It must know
what it is to develop, and learn to distinguish higher or more complete
stages of intellect and will from those which are rudimentary.

Again, the discussion of mind begins properly with the first or most
undeveloped manifestation-