BEING AND LIVING. ! 3 I 



have been given to the questions What am I ? Why am I ? 

 Whence am I ? How am I related to the matter of my 

 body and to other matter ? What of me when my body is 

 dead? 



Every attempt to answer these questions without, in the 

 first instance, asking and replying to preliminary questions 

 suggested by them has utterly failed. The questioner, in 

 fact, at once discovers the necessity of having the solution 

 of other questions before he can take these fairly into his 

 consideration. " I am," " I live," or " I am alive," is a 

 conviction that forced itself upon him not very long after he 

 began to think what other things were, or might be, or what 

 they might have to do with him. And as some knowledge 

 of some other things was acquired, he soon found out that 

 very little definite knowledge was possessed by others about 

 themselves, and that there were no means at his disposal 

 for determining exactly what he wanted to know about 

 himself. 



He could not explain to himself or to others exactly what 

 he meant by " being," or by being " alive." He knew that he 

 lived he knew that he was, but what he meant by being in 

 the sense of living, he could not adequately explain. Now, 

 when we come to enquire, with the aid of clear and accurately 

 defined terms, we soon demonstrate that this preliminary 

 question concerning the meaning of " living " has not yet 

 been satisfactorily answered. In the numerous text-books we 

 meet with plenty of opinions, plenty of suggestions, plenty of 

 assertions, plenty of positive beliefs, but neither the first 

 treatise on philosophy nor the most elementary grammar of 

 science furnishes an account that in any degree approaches 

 to a clear simple answer. Every one who has written upon 



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