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Thomas Reid on Plants and Animals

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, by Thomas Reid (Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1855, orig. 1785)

We have no reason to ascribe intelligence, or even sensation, to plants; yet there appears in them an active force and energy, which cannot be the result of any arrangement or combination of inert matter. The same thing may be said of those powers by which animals are nourished and grow, by which matter gravitates, by which magnetical and electrical bodies attract and repel each other, and by which the parts of solid bodies cohere.