6 THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LIFE 



for example) and farthest away those which have but a 

 small number of these 'characters. This is a new and more 

 concrete and instructive form of the principle of continuity. 

 It will help us to understand that living bodies may have 

 come from not-living bodies by way of evolution. 



When such objective study has been furnished and only 

 then men may remember that they are themselves living 

 beings ; and they will verify the fact that the objective 

 definition of life applies to themselves and to their fellows 

 as well as to dogs, foxes and chestnut-trees. Then, verifying 

 that they are also conscious, they may ask themselves 

 whether other living beings are not so as well ; they may 

 seek to find out how it is that beings can be conscious and, 

 for their mental satisfaction, they may imagine unverifiable 

 hypotheses like that of universal consciousness. This is 

 the hypothesis which has been mistakenly brought forward 

 under the name of universal life. But, once more, if life 

 is not to be defined so as to distinguish living bodies from 

 not-living bodies, a man from his corpse, the word life will 

 no longer have any meaning. 



Moreover, if we are able to make a complete objective 

 study of living beings without paying any attention what- 

 ever to this hypothesis of universal consciousness, it must 

 be for the reason that such an hypothesis answers to nothing 

 that appears objectively. The fact of being conscious does 

 not intervene in the slightest degree in directing vital move- 

 ments. Maudsley first and Huxley after him call this 

 " the theory of epiphenomenal consciousness." Here we 

 have only to limit ourselves to the purely objective study 

 of living beings. 



