Explore "Plants and Insects" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Plants exist _in_ themselves. Insects _by_, or by means of, themselves. / Men, _for_ themselves. The perfection of irrational animals is that which / is best for _them_; the perfection of man is that which is absolutely best. / There is growth only in plants; but there is irritability, or, a better / word, instinctivity, in insects.
You may understand by _insect_, life in sections -- diffused generally over / all the parts.
The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a [*Greek: storgae], or affection / _upwards_ to man.
The ant and the bee are, I think, much nearer man in the understanding or / faculty of adapting means to proximate ends than the elephant.[1]
[Footnote 1: / I remember Mr. C. was accustomed to consider the ant, as the most / intellectual, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the irrational / creatures, so far as our present acquaintance with the facts of natural / history enables us to judge. -- ED.]