This relation, as important as it is interesting, deserves surely to be made still clearer by a retrospective view of the whole scale of beings, and by recalling the gradual transition from absolute subjectivity to the highest degrees of objectivity in the intellect. Inorganic Nature namely, is absolutely subjective, no trace whatever of consciousness of an outer world being found in it. Stones, boulders, ice-blocks, even when they fall upon one another, or knock or rub against one another, have no consciousness of each other and of an outer world. Still even these are susceptible to external influence, which causes their position and movement to change and may therefore be considered as a first step towards consciousness. Now, although plants also have no consciousness of the outer world, and although the mere analogue of a consciousness which exists in them must, on the contrary, be conceived as a dull self-enjoyment; yet we see that they all seek light, and that many of them turn their flowers or leaves daily towards the sun, while creepers find their way to supports with which they are not in contact; and finally we see individual kinds of plants show even a sort of irritability. Unquestionably therefore, there is a connection and relation between their movements and surroundings, even those with which they are not in immediate contact; and this connection we must accordingly recognise as a faint analogue to perception. With animal life first appears decided perception--that is, consciousness of other things, as opposed to that clear consciousness of ourselves to which that consciousness of other things first gives rise. This constitutes precisely the true character of animal-nature, as opposed to plant-nature. In the lowest animals, consciousness of the outer world is very limited and dim: each increasing degree of understanding extends it and makes it clearer, and this gradual increase of the understanding again adapts itself to the gradually increasing requirements of the animal, and thus the process continues through the whole long ascending scale of the animal series up to Man, in whom consciousness of the outer world reaches its acme, and in whom the world accordingly presents itself more distinctly and completely than in any other being. Still, even here, there are innumerable degrees in the clearness of consciousness, from the dullest blockhead to genius. Even in normal heads there still remains a considerable tinge of subjectivity in their objective perception of external objects, knowledge still bearing throughout the character of existing merely for the ends of the will. The more eminent the head, the less prominent is this character, and the more purely objective does the representation of the outer world become; till in genius finally it attains completely objectivity, by which the Platonic ideas detach themselves from the individual things, because the mind which comprehends them enhances itself to the pure subject of knowledge. Now, as perception is the basis of all knowledge, all thinking and all insight must be influenced by this fundamental difference in the quality of it, from which arises that complete difference between the ordinary and the superior mind in their whole way of viewing things, which may be noticed on all occasions. From this also proceeds the dull gravity, nearly resembling that of animals, which characterizes common-place heads whose knowledge is acquired solely for the benefit of the will, as opposed to the constant play of exuberant intellect which brightens the consciousness of the superior mind. The consideration of the two extremes in the great scale which we have here exhibited, seems to have given rise to the German hyperbolical expression "_Block_" (_Klotz_), as applied to human beings, and to the English "blockhead."