224 THE MECHANISM OF LIFE 



Intuition and the Law of Conservation.^ — ^When the animal 

 dies it does not cease to exist, because its molecules fall into new 

 chemical configurations and its energy is conserved even if it is 

 dissipated. But we cannot apply the law of conservation to 

 life intuition, because the law itself is only a mode of operation, 

 or a category, of mind which is the intuition itself. And the 

 application of the law of conservation is necessarily restricted 

 to entities that are measurable, while, obviously, mind and the 

 qualities of mind and " feeling " are not, in themselves, capable 

 of measurement — ^they are not " in " space and time. It is not 

 a perception that we measure in applying the " psycho -physical " 

 law of Weber and Fechner, but the strength of the stimulus that 

 precedes a change of consciousness, while the mathematical 

 relation between the change of consciousness and the energetic 

 change in the stimulus proves to be a spurious one when sub- 

 mitted to analysis. Intuition is, therefore, non-energetic, non- 

 measurable, and is not conserved. All that we know about it is 

 itsdf — ^it is us. It manifests or expresses itself in animal 

 behaviour and functioning, and so, when the animal body dies — 

 or becomes unable to function — we must believe that life 

 intuition ceases to exist. Or, at the very least, we have no 

 reason for believing that it can survive the dissolution of the body. 



Of course, the latter, and therefore the life that it expresses, 

 is immortal in a certain sense. In reproduction a part of the 

 body becomes detached and grows to form a new individual, 

 which again reproduces, and so on indefinitely. Since the ability 

 of expression in functioning and behaviour is thus transmitted 

 through an endless series of generations, something in the life 

 intuition is immortal, but undoubtedly something is abolished 

 in the act of reproduction. This is the intuition of continuous, 

 personal identity, which is lost, or at least does not pass from 

 individual to individual. That which we call memory comes 

 into existence with the individual, and ceases to exist when the 

 latter dies. "With memory there is associated, in some way, 

 indetermination of response to sensation, and thus the possibility 

 of evolutionary change. And, of course, with this indetermina- 

 tion goes what we call motive, praise and blame, personal respon- 

 sibility, and " sin." All these cease with the death of the 

 individual body, some of the activities of which are their ex- 

 pression. If the expression of the whole intuition does not 

 persist, then, can we say that the whole intuition itself is con- 

 served ? When we say that life intuition is, but expresses itself 

 in functioning and behaviour, we make the statement because of 



