-at the stage where it is common to brutes and
human beings. Hence we may begin our study of educational psychology at
this point where the distinction between animal and plant appears, and
where the question of the capacity for education arises.

When we understand the relation of feeling or sensibility to the higher
manifestations of mind, we shall see in what consists a capacity for
education, and we shall learn many essentials in regard to the matter
and method, the _what_ and the _how_ of education.

A general survey of the world discovers that there is inter-action
among its parts. This is the verdict of science, as the systematic form
of human experience. In the form of gravitation we understand that each
body depends upon every other body, and the annihilation of a particle
of matter in a body would cause a change in that body which would affect
every other body in the physical universe. Even gravitation, therefore,
is a manifestation of the whole universe in each part of it, although it
is not a manifestation which exists _for_ that part, because the part
does not _know_ it.

There are other forms wherein the whole manifests itself in each part of
it--as, for example, in the phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in
magnetism and electricity. These forms of manifestation of the external
world upon an individual object are destructive to the individuality of
the object. If the nature of a thing is stamped upon it from without, it
is an element only, and not a self; it is dependent, and belongs to that
on which it depends. It does not possess itself, but belongs to that
which _makes_ it, and which gives evidence of ownership by continually
modifying it.

But the plant, as we just now said, has some degree of self-activity,
and is not altogether made by the totality of external conditions. The
growth of the plant is through assimilation of external substances. It
reacts against its surroundings and digests them, and grows through the
nutrition thus formed.

All beings that cannot react against surroundings and modify them, lack
individuality. Individuality begins with this power of reaction and
modification of external surroundings. Even the power of cohesion is a
rudimentary form of reaction and of special individuality.

In the case of the plant, the reaction is _real_, but not also _ideal_.
The plant acts upon its food, and digests it, or assimilates it, and
imposes its _form_ on that which it draws withi