Every man will be sensible of this difficulty, in
proportion as he has been accustomed to contemplate and discriminate
objects extensive and complicated in their nature. The faculties of the
mind itself have never yet been distinguished and defined, with
satisfactory precision, by all the efforts of the most acute and
metaphysical philosophers. Sense, perception, judgment, desire,
volition, memory, imagination, are found to be separated by such
delicate shades and minute gradations that their boundaries have eluded
the most subtle investigations, and remain a pregnant source of
ingenious disquisition and controversy. The boundaries between the great
kingdom of nature, and, still more, between the various provinces, and
lesser portions, into which they are subdivided, afford another
illustration of the same important truth. The most sagacious and
laborious naturalists have never yet succeeded in tracing with certainty
the line which separates the district of vegetable life from the
neighboring region of unorganized matter, or which marks the ermination
of the former and the commencement of the animal empire. A still greater
obscurity lies in the distinctive characters by which the objects in
each of these great departments of nature have been arranged and
assorted.
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