128 From Matter to Man. 



be seen to consist solely in the web of artifice and 

 chicanery which ignorant and interested men have 

 woven around it. 



The picture which this view of life thus presents of 

 a cosmos alive even to its crystals, its molecules, and 

 its atoms, is a conception fraught with disaster to 

 those paracletes of dogma and creed who batten upon 

 superstition. But it is strictly in keeping with the 

 grandeur of existence itself as a mighty whole, in 

 which man and all his works shall prove but transient 

 shows over which the dust of ages shall silently snow, 

 until he and they are shrouded for ever in the debris 

 of eternity. 



Section 7. The Evolution of Mineral Intelligence : 

 That a mineral has intelligence seems preposterous, 

 but the preposterousness may lie solely in the vanity 

 and ignorance of those wiseacres who, from an in- 

 adequate comprehension of the phenomena really 

 involved by, and included in, the operations covered 

 by the term mind, entertain a ridiculously conservative 

 notion of its limits and meaning. 



That a mineral is self-conscious — that is, conscious 

 of its own existence and action as a mineral — does 

 not seem possible ; yet that it is in a sense conscious 

 (or call it by what other name we choose) of other 

 matter, and especially of other matter like itself, can- 

 not be denied. Thus its power of discrimination in 

 selecting the right and rejecting the wrong substance 

 in crystallization, shows a virtual knowledge of the 



