world. What of animals? Like the plants, animals, too, take in, transform
and appropriate the energies of sun, soil and air, though in large part
they take them in forms already prepared by the plants themselves; but,
_unlike_ the plants, animals possess the _autonomous_ power to move about
in space--to creep or crawl or run or swim or fly--it is thus evident that,
compared with plants, animals belong to a higher order, or higher class,
or higher type, or higher dimension of life; we may therefore say that the
type of animal life is a type of _two_ dimensions--a two-dimensional type;
I have called them space-binders because they are distinguished, or
marked, by their autonomous power to move about in space, to abandon one
place and occupy another and so to appropriate the natural fruits of many
localities; the life of animals is thus a life-in-space in a sense
evidently not applicable to plants. And now what shall we say of _Man_?
Like the animals, human beings have indeed the power of mobility--the
autonomous power to move--the capacity for binding space, and it is obvious
that, if they possessed no capacity of higher order, men, women and
children would indeed be animals. But what are the facts? The facts, if we
will but note them and reflect upon them, are such as to show us that the
chasm separating human nature from animal nature is even wider and deeper
than the chasm between animal life and the life of plants. For man
improves, animals do not; man progresses, animals do not; man invents more
and more complicated tools, animals do not; man is a creator of material
and spiritual wealth, animals are not; man is a builder of civilization,
animals are not; man makes the _past live in the present and the present
in the future_, animals do not; man is thus a _binder of time_, animals
are not. In the light of such considerations, if only we will attend to
their mighty significance, it is as clear as anything can be or can
become, that the life of man--the time-binder--is as radically distinct from
that of animals--mere space-binders--as animal life is distinct from that of
plants or as the nature of a solid is distinct from that of a surface, or
that of a surface from that of a line. It is, therefore, perfectly
manifest that, when we regard human beings as animals or as mixtures of
animal nature with something mysteriously _super_natural, we are guilty of
the same _kind_ of blunder as if we regarded animals as plants or as