The Origin of Sentient Life. 179 



bility. Organic sensibility, feeling ; what account can 

 evolution give of these most notable phenomena? 

 The living organism, immensely complex and most 

 skilfully adjusted to its uses, is, by hypothesis, whether 

 in its present activities or in the process of its con- 

 struction through an incalculable series of changes, to 

 be accounted for by the laws of matter and motion 

 and these only. Given an adequate knowledge of 

 these laws, the entire phenomenon would be compre- 

 hended. The living organism is, on Mr. Spencer's 

 theory, in all its activities and properties, wholly 

 mechanical, using that term in its widest sense, as in- 

 cluding all modes of molecular motion. 



The dog is struck ; he utters a cry of pain. Is the 

 sense of pain seeming only, or real ? Is it a dynamic 

 product solely an effect of the same kind as the 

 vibration of a tuning-fork, or the changed molecular 

 -condition of the snowy petal of a lily when it is 

 marred by a touch of the finger ? To answer in the 

 affirmative is to accept a thorough-going doctrine of 

 the mechanical structure of animals, making them 

 merely automatic machines of inconceivable subtilty 

 <of adjustment and action. On the other hand, we 

 ourselves know what it is to suffer pain ; we have a 

 more immediate knowledge of pain than of mechanical 

 effects. Transferring our own feeling to a like in- 

 stance, we do not doubt that the dog has a real sense 

 of suffering. 



What, then, is the exact nature of that activity in 



