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as much reason as for asserting a chasm between animal life and vegetal life, the difficulties in his way would have been no less insuperable. For those lowest forms of irritability in the animal kingdom which, I suppose, Mr. Martineau refers to as the "beginning of mind," are not distinguishable from the irritability which plants display: they in no greater degree imply consciousness. If the sudden folding of a sensitive-plant's leaf when touched, or the spreading out of the stamens in a wild-cistus when gently brushed, is to be considered a vital action of a purely physical kind; then so too must be considered the equally slow contraction of a polype's tentacles. And yet, from this simple motion of an animal of low type, we may pass by insensible stages through ever-complicating forms of actions, with their accompanying signs of feeling and intelligence, until we reach the highest. Even apart from the evidence derived from the ascending grades of animals up from _zoophytes_, as they are significantly named, it needs only to observe the evolution of a single animal to see that there does not exist any break or chasm between the life which shows no mind and the life which shows mind. The yelk of an egg which the cook has just broken, not only yields no sign of mind, but yields no sign of life. It does not respond to a stimulus as much even as many plants do. Had the egg, instead of being broken by the cook, been left under the hen for a certain time, the yelk would have passed by infinitesimal gradations through a series of forms ending in the chick; and by similarly infinitesimal gradations would have arisen those functions which end in the chick breaking its shell; and which, when it gets out, show themselves in running about, distinguishing and picking up food, and squeaking if hurt. When did the feeling begin? and how did there come into existence that power of perception which the chick's actions show? Should it be objected that the chick's actions are mainly automatic, I will not dwell on the fact that, though they are largely so, the chick manifestly has feeling and therefore consciousness; but I will accept the objection, and propose that instead we take the human being. The course of development before birth is just of the same general kind; and similarly, at a certain stage, begins to be accompanied by reflex movements. At birth there is displayed an amount of mind certainly not greater than that of the chi
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