THE CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMAN LIFE 41 



scribed. If by and by, we come upon facts of an 

 entirely different order from those classified under 

 physiological functions, we shall need an appropriate 

 terminology to distinguish them. Without this, we 

 shall not attain to the clearness of statement which 

 Professor Huxley desires. Indeed, the structure of 

 language will in itself disclose whether need has 

 arisen for an extended vocabulary. If facts of 

 consciousness, phenomena of spirit, are quite 

 different from facts explained by the law of gravita 

 tion, and also from facts resulting from the activity 

 possible to apparatus under physiological laws, we 

 shall need to mark this difference, by additions to the 

 language sufficient to describe mechanical action. We 

 shall eventually find it impossible to secure clear de 

 scription, or effective discussion, without a vocabulary 

 marking the difference between matter and mind. 

 Everything here depends upon the range of functions 

 belonging to human life. 



Actions common to all life are fitly described as 

 movements of material structure, open in some 

 degree to external observation. These movements are 

 observed by us through our sensory apparatus being 

 affected by the external occurrence. Looking a little 

 closer, under guidance of science, it appears that all 

 visible forms of muscular activity, are dependent on 

 internal organic action, more or less hidden from 

 ordinary observation. There is in all organic life, an 

 apparatus providing for sensibility and movement. 

 Whether the life contemplated is in the sea, or in the 

 land ; whether the organism is comparatively minute, 

 as in the insect, or bulky, as in the elephant ; whether 

 simple in structure as in the shell-fish, or elaborately 



