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