n6 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



doms, of which one, the less concerned with 

 movement, was more concerned with making the 

 explosive, whilst the other confined itself to mak- 

 ing- use of it. Nevertheless, the essence of life 

 seems to be to secure that matter, by a process 

 necessarily very slow and difficult, should store 

 up energy ready for life afterwards to expend 

 this energy suddenly in free movements. Now, 

 what precisely would a free cause do a cause 

 incapable of forcing the necessity of matter, or 

 only able to force it to an infinitesimal extent, and 

 which, nevertheless, were desirous of producing 

 movements of increasingly greater power? It 

 would act in precisely this way. It would arrange 

 so as merely to have to press, as it were, the 

 trigger of a pistol in which there would be no 

 friction, or to furnish an infinitesimal spark, profit- 

 ing by an energy that it would have gradually 

 accumulated by turning every movement to 

 account. 



But we arrive at the same conclusion if we re- 

 gard the living and conscious being along a dif- 

 ferent line of facts not on the side of " choice," 

 but on that of " memory." By what sign do we 

 recognise in current experience a " man of 

 action," I mean a man able to impress his mark 

 on the events, large or small, amongst which he 

 evolves ? Surely by the fact that he can take in, 

 at a single glance, a great number of things, 

 especially a great number of previous happen- 

 ings. He seizes all these in a single perception 



