38 Life and Matter [chap. n. 



otherwise essentially independent of them ? 

 (This idea is expanded in Chapters VI. to 

 X., and see note at end of present chapter.) 



Professor Haeckel would answer this 

 question with a contemptuous negative ; and 

 the treatment which he would thus give to 

 life he would also extend to mind and con- 

 sciousness, to affection, to art, to poetry, to 

 religion, and all the other facts of experience 

 to which in the process of evolution human- 

 ity has risen : I say he would answer the 

 question, whether these had any real exist- 

 ence other than as a necessary concomitant 

 of a sufficiently complex material aggregate, 

 with a contemptuous negative ; but I 

 challenge him to say by what right he gives 

 that answer. His speculation is that all 

 these properties are nascent and latent in the 

 material atoms themselves, that these have 

 the potentiality of life and choice and con- 

 sciousness, which we perceive in their 

 developed combinations. As a speculation 

 this is legitimate ; but the only answer 

 that can by science legitimately be given at 



