Persistence of Existence 37 



But are we to conclude, therefore, that 

 nothing else exists f that the existence of 

 one thing disproves the existence of others ? 

 The contention would be absurd. The 

 category of life has not been touched in 

 anything we have said so far ; no relation 

 has been established between life and energy, 

 or between life and ether. The nature of 

 life is unknown. Is life also a thing of 

 which constancy can be asserted ? When it 

 disappears from a material environment is it 

 knocked out of existence, or is it merely 

 transferred to some other surroundings, be- 

 coming as difficult to identify and recog- 

 nise as are the gases of a burnt manuscript 

 or the vapour of a vanished cloud ? Is 

 it a temporary trivial collocation associated 

 with certain complex groupings of the 

 atoms of matter, and resolved into nothing- 

 ness when that grouping is interfered with ? 

 or is it something immaterial and itself 

 fundamental, something which uses these 

 collocations of matter in order to display 

 itself amid material surroundings, but is 



