16 INTRODUCTORY 



resolved to take up golf instead of hunting. 

 Spontaneity appears, indeed, to be the most 

 distinctive of Life's attributes the capacity 

 which marks it off most clearly from lifeless 

 matter. To deny its existence is, then, the natural 

 inclination of those to whom Life appears to be 

 the result of purely physical causes. 



Memory, Habit, and Imitation. These faculties 

 appear to arise from the tendency of living matter 

 to repeat its reaction to a stimulus to convert, 

 so to speak, a shock into a vibration. Our heart 

 and lungs, once started, maintain their rhythm : 

 a line of conduct, a course of thought, tends to 

 become habitual. This tendency appears also to 

 affect inanimate matter : the physical world 

 abounds with illustrations of it : such are the 

 vibrations which we translate into light and 

 sound. Memory is the faculty of repeating the 

 impressions which the brain has received through 

 the senses. Habit enables us to swell the influence 

 of one instinct at the expense of others, and affords 

 us an indirect means of controlling our passions ; 

 by Imitation we repeat, in thought or in action, 

 impressions that we have received by sight or 

 hearing. Repetition is the antithesis of spon- 

 taneity, and we may conjecture that these 

 opposites represent respectively, the dominance 

 of Matter over Life and of Life over Matter. But 

 we owe to memory the whole of the material with 

 which we build up our mental life : without it 

 thought would be impossible. And by imitation 

 and habit we appropriate the ideas or behaviour 

 of others who are more intelligent or experienced 

 than ourselves, so that the inventive originality 

 of the few bears fruit for the many, and the trans- 

 mission of human culture is assured. 



