How, as it
were in an instant, do our minds, with one glance, see all the parts
of a demonstration, which may very well be called a long one, if we
consider the time it will require to put it into words, and step by
step show it another? Secondly, we shall not be so much surprised that
this is done in us with so little notice, if we consider how the
facility which we get of doing things, by a custom of doing, makes
them often pass in us without our notice. Habits, especially such as
are begun very early, come at last to produce actions in us, which
often escape our observation. How frequently do we, in a day, cover
our eyes with our eyelids, without perceiving that we are at all in
the dark! Men that, by custom, have got the use of a by-word, do
almost in every sentence pronounce sounds which, though taken notice
of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe. And
therefore it is not so strange, that our mind should often change
the idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one
serve only to excite the other, without our taking notice of it.
11. Perception puts the difference between animals and vegetables.
This faculty of perception seems to me to be, that which puts the
distinction betwixt the animal kingdom and the inferior parts of
nature. For, however vegetables have, many of them, some degrees of
motion, and upon the different application of other bodies to them, do
very briskly alter their figures and motions, and so have obtained the
name of sensitive plants, from a motion which has some resemblance
to that which in animals follows upon sensation: yet I suppose it is
all bare mechanism; and no otherwise produced than the turning of a
wild oat-beard, by the insinuation of the particles of moisture, or
the shortening of a rope, by the affusion of water.
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