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PRELUDE TO CHAPTER XII.
As the treatise is drawing to a close, this chapter again alludes to the distinction between the life in plants and animals from the presence or absence of sensibility—thus, animals are distinguished from plants by being sentient, as plants are from inanimate bodies by nutrition and growth. Aristotle[1] placed plants immediately after inanimate substances, and says that they are distinguished, generically, by degrees of vitality; that compared with other bodies they appear to be almost alive (σχεδὸν ὥσπερ εὔψυχον); compared with animals, to be inanimate; and that the transition from the one to the other is in an unbroken series. Thus, there are "marine creatures," he says, "which cannot with certainty be ranged among either animals or plants; and sponge has altogether the appearance of a plant." Lamarck[2] has substantively adopted this, as he, too,
