232 CONSCIOUSNESS NOT WORK 



apprehend not ; and it seems to me that the parallel 

 mode of expression would be the " mechanical equiva- 

 lent of fire," not of heat. The pursuit of this analogy 

 may lead us up to the point where mind and energy 

 can be seen to diverge. To the ancients, with whom 

 fire was an element, the analogy between it and life 

 was always deemed close, and their ideas survive even 

 to this day in the popular and poetical terms applied 

 to life. But with the rise of modern science the 

 notions of a special substance, called fire, or of any 

 occult qualities connected with combustion, have been 

 dissipated. The phenomena are presumed to be ac- 

 counted for when we describe the new compounds 

 formed during the chemical combination of the com- 

 bustible and oxygen, and measure the active force 

 evolved as heat and light. Nothing is counted for any 

 perception by the elements themselves of the mutual 

 influence of their affinities. There is nothing to cor- 

 respond to fire. It has no existence except as a word 

 describing phenomena whose causes and consequents 

 are otherwise sufficiently accounted for. Combustion 

 may stand for the type of all strictly chemical and 

 physical processes in the world : in none of them, as- 

 far as we know, is there any phenomenon like per- 

 ception by themselves of the action taking place 

 between the different elements. When we advance to 

 the infinitely more complicated molecular state of 

 living matter, we still find in the whole functions of 

 organic life the same relations of matter and force. 

 The involutions of the self-renewing protoplasm, and 

 its subdivision, growth, and development, the deposition 

 of tissue and secretion, and all the functions in animals 



