MIND IN MATTER. 307 



has lost its light; the voice gives forth no more intelligence; 

 the muscles cease to grasp the implement; the fabric of a man 

 now lies prone, motionless, speechless, insensible, dead a stu- 

 pendous and total change. But what is changed? Not the 

 mechanism. The heart is still in its place, with all its valves ; 

 the brain shows no lesion ; the muscles are all ready to act ; 

 every part remains as it was in life. Neither chemistry nor 

 the microscope detects, as yet, a material change. But some- 

 thing has gone out of the mechanism, for it is not as it was 

 something inscrutable, but yet something which ruled the 

 mechanism sustaining its action, lighting the eye, giving, in- 

 formation to the tongue, making of this machinery absolutely 

 all that which led us to say, "Here is a man." The man has 

 gone out and left only his silent workshop behind.. 



Consider the life-powers in action. The organism is in 

 process of growth. A common fund of assimilative material 

 is provided by the digestive organs. Out of this, atom by 

 atom is selected and built into the various tissue-fabrics. Here 

 such atoms are selected as the formation of bone requires ; 

 there, the atoms suited for nerve or brain-structure; in an- 

 other place, the material of which muscles are made. If, un- 

 fortunately, the lime should be brought to be worked up in 

 the muscle-factory, or the nerve-stuff to be made into bone, 

 the whole organism would be thrown into disorder. Nice 

 selection of material is indispensable. Then notice the build- 

 ing of the bones. In one place the framework is so laid that 

 the filling up will result in a flat bone. It is to be a shoulder 

 blade, or a portion of the skull. In another place the frame- 

 work is elongated ; it is to be a long bone. The humerus is 

 never built into the skull, nor the shoulder-blade into the sole 

 of the foot. Every bone is constructed for its place and its 

 function. The whole system of bones, moreover, is conformed 

 to a definite fundamental plan of structure it is according to 

 the plan of a vertebrate. Now, selection of appropriate ma- 

 terial is an act of intelligence. The determination of one 

 form of structure rather than another implies discriminating 

 intelligence and executive will. The conformation of the total 



