nto details, which would fill an
article, we may safely say that the difficulty with the naturalist is
all the other way,--that all these broad differences vanish one by one
as we approach the lower confines of the two kingdoms, and that no
_absolute_ distinction whatever is now known between them. It is quite
possible that the same organism may be both vegetable and animal, or may
be first the one and then the other. If some organisms may be said to be
at first vegetables and then animals, others, like the spores and other
reproductive bodies of many of the lower Algae, may equally claim to
have first a characteristically animal, and then an unequivocally
vegetable existence. Nor is the gradation purely restricted to these
simple organisms. It appears in general functions, as in that of
reproduction, which is reducible to the same formula in both kingdoms,
while it exhibits close approximations in the lower forms; also in a
common or similar ground of sensibility in the lowest forms of both,
a common faculty of effecting movements tending to a determinate end,
traces of which pervade the vegetable kingdom,--while on the other hand,
this indefinable principle, this vegetable _animula vagula, blandula_,
graduates into the higher sensitiveness of the lower class of animals.
Nor need we hesitate to recognize the fine gradations from simple
sensitiveness and volition to the higher instinctive and other psychical
manifestations of the higher brute animals. The gradation is undoubted,
however we may explain it. Again, propagation is of one mode in the
higher animals, of two in all plants; but vegetative propagation, by
budding or offshoots, extends through the lower grades of animals. In
both kingdoms there may be separation of the offshoots, or indifference
in this respect, or continued and organic union with the parent stock;
and this either with essential independence of the offshoots, or with
a subordination of these to a common whole, or finally with such
subordination and amalgamation, along with specialization of function,
that the same parts, which in other cases can be regarded only as
progeny, in these become only members of an individual.

This leads to the question of individuality, a subject quite too large
and too recondite for present discussion. The conclusion of the whole
matter, however, is, that individuality--that very ground of _being_ as
distinguished from _thing_--is not attained in Nature at one leap. I