MIND IN MATTER. 307 



has lost its light; the voice gives forth no more intelligence; 

 the muscles cease to grasp the implement; the fabric of a man 

 now lies prone, motionless, speechless, insensible, dead a stu- 

 pendous and total change. But what is changed ? Not the 

 mechanism. The heart is still in its place, with all its valves ; 

 the brain shows no lesion ; the muscles are all ready to act ; 

 every part remains as it was in life. Neither chemistry nor 

 the microscope detects, as yet, a material change. But some- > 

 thing has gone out of the mechanism, for it is not as it was I 

 something inscrutable, but yet something which ruled the 

 mechanism sustaining its action, lighting the eye, giving in- 

 formation to the tongue, making of this machinery absolutely 

 all that which led us to say, "Here is a man." The man has 

 gone out and left only his silent workshop behind. 



Consider the life-powers in action. The organism is in 

 process of growth. A common fund of assimilative material 

 is provided by the digestive organs. Out of this, atom by 

 atom is selected and built into the various tissue-fabrics. Here 

 such atoms are selected as the formation of bone requires; 

 there, the atoms suited for nerve or brain-structure; in an- 

 other place, the material of which muscles are made. If, un- 

 fortunately, the lime should be brought to be worked up in 

 the muscle-factory, or the nerve-stuff to be made into bone, 

 the whole organism would be thrown into disorder. Nice 

 selection of material is indispensable. Then notice the build- | 

 ing of the bones. In one place the framework is so laid that 

 the filling up will result in a flat bone. It is to be a shoulder 

 blade, or a portion of the skull. In another place the frame- 

 work is elongated ; it is to be a long bone. The humerus is 

 never built into the skull, nor the shoulder-blade into the sole 

 of the foot. Every bone is constructed for its place and its 

 function. The whole system of bones, moreover, is conformed 

 to a definite fundamental plan of structure it is according to 

 the plan of a vertebrate. Now, selection of appropriate ma- 

 terial is an act of intelligence. The determination of one 

 form of structure rather than another implies discriminating 

 intelligence and executive will. The conformation of the total 



