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. All which is done without any sensation in the
subject, or the having or receiving any ideas.