160 DIFFERENT FORMS OF FEELING. 



to an amoeba, to a white blood corpuscle, and a pus cor- 

 puscle. In the " conscious man," the " unconscious infant," 

 the " unconscious mollusc and plant," and the unconscious 

 amoeba, pus corpuscle, yeast plant and bacterium, acts are 

 constantly proceeding that have much in common, but it 

 would surely be very unreasonable to affirm that therefore 

 all the acts proceeding in these things are alike, of the same 

 nature and due to the same causes, or to argue that because 

 we cannot draw fine lines of demarcation, therefore con- 

 sciousness is alike characteristic of man and a bacterium. 

 We may admit that a thing is alive without thereby being 

 forced to hold that it is conscious in the same sense that we 

 are conscious. Consciousness is not conceivable without 

 life, but it does not therefore follow that life involves con- 

 sciousness or even sentience. In a sense it would be true 

 to say an amoeba, a white blood corpuscle, or a pus cor- 

 puscle feels, but it would be the reverse of true to say that 

 these things feel in the same sense as we say a mollusc, or 

 an insect, or a vertebrate animal feds. There is, as I have 

 explained, the feeling due to nerves, and the feeling which 

 is manifested by things without nerves, and these are two 

 very different kinds of feeling having, it is true, something 

 in common, as life is essential to feeling of every kind, but 

 nevertheless differing essentially and irreconcilably. It would 

 surely be as erroneous to talk of the will of an amoeba in the 

 same sense as we speak of the will of a man as it would be to 

 affirm that the movements of amoebae and man are alike 

 and of the same kind. The " reasoning by analogy that 

 carries us along with irresistible force " often carries us far 

 away from reason towards assertion and dogma which at 

 length are made to do duty for fact and reason. 



