n its organism. It does
not, however, reproduce within itself the externality as that external
exists for itself. It does not form within itself an idea, or even a
feeling of that which is external to it. Its participation in the
external world is only that of _real_ modification of it or through it;
either the plant digests the external, or the external limits _it_, and
prevents its growth, so that where one begins the other ceases. Hence it
is that the elements--the matter of which the plant is composed, that
which it has assimilated even--still retain a large degree of foreign
power or force--a large degree of externality which the plant has not
been able to annul or to digest. The plant-activity subdues its food,
changes its shape and its place, subordinates it to its use; but what
the matter brings with it, and still retains of the world beyond the
plant, does not exist for the plant; the plant cannot read or interpret
the rest of the universe from that small portion of it which it has
taken up within its own organism. And yet the history of the universe is
impressed on each particle of matter, as well within the plant as
outside of it, and it could be understood were there capacities for
recognizing it.

The reaction of the life of the plant upon the external world is not
sufficient to constitute a fixed, abiding individuality. With each
accretion there is some change of particular individuality. Every growth
to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals--new plants--a
ceaseless multiplication of individuals, and not the preservation of the
same individual. The species is preserved, but not the particular
individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual,
which grows out from the previous growth as the first sprout grew from
the seed. Each part furnishes a soil for the next. When a plant no
longer sends out new individuals, we say it is dead. The life of the
plant is only a life of nutrition.

Aristotle called vegetable life "the nutritive soul," and the life of
the animal the "feeling," or _sensitive_ soul. Nutrition is only an
activity of preservation of the general form in new individuals, it is
only the life of the species, and not the life of the permanent
individual.

Therefore we see that in the vegetable world we do not possess a being
that can be educated--for no individual of it can realize _within_
itself the species; its realization of the species is a continual
process o