The reason whereof is, that, in these two cases- a
mass of matter and a living body- identity is not applied to the
same thing.
4. Identity of vegetables. We must therefore consider wherein an oak
differs from a mass of matter, and that seems to me to be in this,
that the one is only the cohesion of particles of matter any how
united, the other such a disposition of them as constitutes the
parts of an oak; and such an organization of those parts as is fit
to receive and distribute nourishment, so as to continue and frame the
wood, bark, and leaves, &c., of an oak, in which consists the
vegetable life. That being then one plant which has such an
organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common
life, it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes of
the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of
matter vitally united to the living plant, in a like continued
organization conformable to that sort of plants. For this
organization, being at any one instant in any one collection of
matter, is in that particular concrete distinguished from all other,
and is that individual life, which existing constantly from that
moment both forwards and backwards, in the same continuity of
insensibly succeeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it
has that identity which makes the same plant, and all the parts of it,
parts of the same plant, during all the time that they exist united in
that continued organization, which is fit to convey that common life
to all the parts so united.
Pages:
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478