Habits, especially such as are begun very early, come at last to produce actions in us, which often escape our observation.

How frequently do we, in a day, cover our eyes with our eyelids, without perceiving that we are at all in the dark! Men that, by custom, have got the use of a by-word, do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds which, though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe.

And therefore it is not so strange, that our mind should often change the idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one serve only to excite the other, without our taking notice of it.
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.
12.