246 LIFE AND DEATH. 



philosophical argument. It is the assertion that no 

 arrangement or combination of elements can put 

 forth any new activity essentially different from the 

 activities of the elements of which it is composed. 

 Man is living clay, say Diderot and Cabanis; and, 

 on the other hand, he is a thinking being. As it is 

 impossible to produce tliat wliicJi tJiinks from tliat wliicli 

 does not think, the clay must possess a rudiment of 

 thought. But is there not another alternative ? May 

 not the new phenomenon, thought, be the effect of 

 the arrangement of this clay? If we exclude this 

 alternative, we must then consider arrangement and 

 organization as incapable of producing in arranged 

 and organized matter a new property different from 

 that which it presented before such arrangement. 

 Living protoplasm, says another, is merely an 

 assemblage of brute elements; "these brute elements 

 must therefore possess a rudiment of life." This is 

 the same implied supposition which we have just 

 considered ; if life is not the basis of each element, it 

 cannot result from their simple assemblage. 



Man and animals are combinations of atoms, says 

 M. le Dantec. It is more natural to admit that 

 human consciousness is the result of the elementary 

 consciousness of the constituent atoms than to con- 

 sider it as resulting from construction by means 

 of elements with no consciousness. " Life," says 

 Haeckel, "is universal; we could not conceive of its 

 existence in certain aggregates of matter if it did not 

 belong to their constituent elements." Here the 

 postulate is almost expressed. 



The argument is always the same ; even the same 

 Words are used : the fundamental hypothesis is the 

 same j only it remains more or less unexpressed, 



