148 Life and Matter [chap.to. 



condition, that it would never go out of 

 essential existence, but that it could be 

 brought into relation with the world of 

 matter by certain acts, that while there it 

 could operate in a certain way, controlling 

 the motion of bodies, interacting with forms 

 of energy, producing sundry effects for a 

 time, and then disappearing from our ken 

 to the immaterial region whence it came, 

 he would be saying what no physicist would 

 think it worth while to object to, what 

 many indeed might agree with. 



Well, that is the kind of assertion which 

 I want to make, as a working hypothesis, 

 concerning life. 



An acorn has in itself the potentiality not 

 of one oak-tree alone, but of a forest of oak- 

 trees, to the thousandth generation, and 

 indeed of oak-trees without end. There is 

 no sort of law of " conservation " here. It 

 is not as if something were passed on from 

 one thing to another. It is not analogous to 

 energy at all ; it is analogous to the magnetism 

 which can be excited by any given magnet : 



