The Origin of Sentient Life. 18 1 



by Mr. Spencer, we shall employ it in our argument. 

 Let us then regard the universe as composed of atoms 

 and their motions ; let these atoms be supposed to be 

 .arranged in any imaginable order : if in that universe 

 there should arise this most remarkable phenomenon 

 called feeling, how can it be accounted for ? Several 

 hypotheses are conceivable. Feeling may be assumed 

 to be latent in every atom, or in special kinds of 

 atoms, or it may be supposed to lie hidden in some 

 peculiar combination of atoms, or to be a mode of 

 atomic motion, or to arise by the combination of 

 atomic motions. No other supposition seems possible. 

 Now, if the sense of pain is not latent in the atoms, it 

 is inconceivable that it could come to be through any 

 combination of them. Aggregates of atoms, each 

 devoid of sensibility, having immanent in them 

 severally no rudiment of feeling, or capacity for 

 feeling, cannot acquire it by being brought into 

 contact. Did feeling arise in such conditions it 

 would be uncaused : something had then come out 

 of nothing. Nor is it possible to imagine that atoms 

 without capacity for feeling could acquire that capa- 

 city by being moved in some particular manner, 

 either individually or in groups. We are then driven 

 either to affirm the capacity for feeling to be a pro- 

 perty resident in atoms, or to posit the existence of 

 something other than matter. If we choose the 

 former alternative, we ascribe to the atoms feeling, 

 actual or potential : we* constitute them monads ; and 



