LIFE 341 



stages in the evolution of consciousness, reducing them to 

 scientific formulae or laws, but he cannot postulate meta- 

 kinesis, still less consciousness, as that which separates 

 living from lifeless groups. All types of life do not 

 appear capable of developing into conscious types ; and a 

 potentiality not bearing any outward " recognition marks " 

 will not lead us to a definition of life any more than the 

 potentiality of becoming a bishop would lead us to a 

 definition of man. 



8 5 . — Do the Lazvs of Motion apply to Life ? 



If we seek for the characteristics of life apart from the 

 possibility of consciousness, we can only seek them in 

 some special features of those sequences of sense-impres- 

 sions which we associate with living organisms. Now we 

 have seen that groups of sense-impressions are all dis- 

 tinguished under the two modes of space and time, and 

 we are thus able to conceptualise all change as a motion 

 of ideal corpuscles. Now " currents," " vibrations of 

 filaments," " moving masses of protoplasm," " contraction," 

 " change of form," " strain," etc., are all terms in cur- 

 rent biological use adopted to describe sequences or 

 changes in sense- impressions. As to what are the 

 symbolic bodies to which these motions are attributed, 

 and how they are to be built up from the most elementary 

 organic corpuscles — " unit-masses of living matter " as one 

 biologist terms them — there appears to be some diversity 

 of opinion. But there is practical agreement among 

 biologists that the organic corpuscles — -the " physiological 

 units" of Spencer or the " plastidules " of Haeckel — must 

 be conceived as constructed from the atom and molecule, 

 the inorganic corpuscles of the physicist. Hence, if all 

 we are to understand by mechanism is something which 

 we conceive as being constructed of atom and molecule 

 and in motion, then life can only be conceived as 

 mechanical. 



How, therefore, we must ask, is it possible for us to 

 distinguish the living from the lifeless, if we can describe 



