UNIVERSAL LIFE. 243 



leads us to remove the barrier between the two king- 

 doms, and to consider minerals as endowed with a 

 sort of rudimentary life, is the same as that which 

 compels us to admit that there is no fundamental 

 difference between natural phenomena. There are 

 transitions between what lives and what does not; 

 between the animate being and the brute body. And 

 in the same way there are transitions between what 

 thinks and what does not think, between what is 

 thought and what is not thought, between the con- 

 scious and the unconscious. This idea of insensible 

 transition, of a continuous path between apparent 

 antitheses, at first arouses an insuperable opposition 

 in minds not prepared for it by a long comparison of 

 facts. It is slowly realized, and finally is accepted by 

 those who, in the world of things, follow die infinity 

 of gradations presented by natural phenomena. The 

 principle of continuity comes at last to constitute, as 

 one may say, a mental habit Thus the man of science 

 may be led, like the philosopher, to entertain the 

 idea of a rudimentary form of life animating matter. 

 He may, like the philosopher, be guided by this idea; 

 he may attribute a priori to brute matter all the really 

 essential qualities of living beings. But this must 

 be on the condition that, assuming these properties to 

 be common, he must afterwards demonstrate them by 

 means of observation and experiment He must show 

 that molecules and atom*, far from being inert and 

 dead masses, are in reality active elements, endowed 

 with a kind of inferior life, which is manifested by all 

 the transformations observed in brute matter, by 

 attractions and repulsions, by movements in response 

 to external stimuli, by variations of state and of 

 equilibrium; and finally, by the systematic methods 



