When we look at man through the eyes of the philosopher we see life clearly as a _spiritual_ impulse, an impulse of a higher order than the animal, at least as much higher as that is than the material, and ever driving on. Man is not content; he is not fulfilled. He is fully awake; and he is not only conserving his long past but peering into the distances of his future. His brain is flexible, and able to provide a multitude of new structural arrangements; it is therefore an instrument of such choice as gives him leave to shape his future. And it is an active instrument; it brings to him through extending perception a field for his own spiritual activities that stretches out to match them, and enables him to become a ruler among circumstances. It allows him to worship beauty and even to create it; and to seek and worship truth; to adore goodness and be good. It permits desire to grow and the spirit within him to reach limit after limit, using each limit as an opportunity for further growth. All this the brain of man allows and promotes; and on this earth his brain alone. There is nowhere so magnificent and marvellous a bodily organ; for in it and by means of it physical things and physical laws are subdued to the purposes and ends of a free enduring creation.
Listen to the moaning of the pine, at whose roots thy hut is fastened. _Kabir._
The divergent streams of that primaeval fountain of life as they spread out upon the earth, in the earth, in the air, in, under and upon the waters, have given to it the endless variety of its creatures. In this variety, and of those streams, there are three and no more than three main currents; there are three directions and grouped characters and qualities of life. Each of these in its turn branches into minor streams and differences of creatures. The main currents are those of the plants, the insects, and the vertebrate animals.
We have seen that one function of the life of plants gives to the whole world of living creatures access to the energy of the sun. Yet as regards intelligence and conscious relation with other creatures the plant may be said to be asleep; it carries on its vital functions and builds up its manifold and admirable structures, working as though in sleep. Its whole activity, varied though it be, is like that of a dreamer. Confined within a wall of cellulose, the plant-cell works out its life as though, for its awareness, no other creature lived.