LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 113 



though of course in very feeble degree, it may 

 decide to fix itself just where it finds suitable con- 

 ditions of life which will do away with the neces- 

 sity of going to seek the materials it requires : 

 that means an assured and tranquil life, a hum- 

 drum sort of existence, but it involves the drowsi- 

 ness which dogs our inactivity, the slumber of 

 consciousness.* The former direction corre- 

 sponds in the main to the line of animal develop- 

 ment (I say in the main, because many species of 

 animals give up their mobility, and thus probably 

 also their consciousness); the latter, in the main, 

 is proper to vegetables ; again I say " in the 

 main," since the faculty of moving, and probably 

 therefore also of consciousness, may occasionally 

 reawaken in vegetable life. 



Now, if we consider from this standpoint the 

 entrance of life in the world, this entrance will 

 appear to us like the introduction, into the world, 

 of something that encroaches upon inert matter. 

 In the non-living unorganised world, if this were 

 left alone, necessity would sit enthroned. In 

 determinate conditions inert matter reacts in a 

 determinate way; in the inanimate world nothing 

 is unforeseeable, and if our science were suf- 

 ficiently advanced we should be able to foretell 

 what will happen there, precisely as we can fore- 

 tell the eclipses of the sun and moon. In short, 

 inert matter is subject to mathematical necessity. 



* See on this subject : Cope, The Origin of the Fittest, 

 1887, p. 76. 



