5. 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, etc., 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.
