248 LIFE AND DEATH. 



current ideas, arrangements, aggregates, or groupings 

 of the same universal matter, that is to say, of the 

 same simple chemical bodies. It results from the 

 preceding postulate that their activities can only differ 

 in degree and form, and not fundamentally. There 

 is no essential difference of nature between the 

 activities of various categories of beings, no hetero- 

 geneity, no discontinuity. We may pass from one to 

 another without coming to an hiatus or impassable 

 gulf. The law of continuity thus appears as a simple 

 consequence of the fundamental postulate. And so 

 it is with the law of evolution, for evolution is merely 

 continuity of action. 



Such are the origins of the philosophical doctrine 

 which universalizes life and extends it to all bodies 

 in nature. 



It may be remarked that this doctrine is not 

 confined to any particular school or sect. Leibniz 

 was by no means a materialist, and he endowed his 

 mundane elements, his monads, not only with a sort 

 of life, but even with a sort of soul. Father Bosco- 

 vitch, Jesuit as he was, and professor in the college of 

 Rome, did not deny to his indivisible points a kind of 

 inferior vitality. St. Thomas, too, the angelical 

 doctor, attributed, according to M. Gardair, to 

 inanimate substances a certain kind of activity, 

 inborn inclinations, and a real appetition towards 

 certain acts. 



