40 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



after the style of Anaximenes or Schopenhauer, 

 " matter and aether are not dead, and moved only 

 by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with 

 sensation and will ; they experience an inclination 

 for condensation, and dislike for strain ; they strive 

 after the one, and struggle against the other." , And 

 W. K. Clifford, who had a theory that matter was 

 caused by bends, twists, and wrinkles in space, and 

 would cease to be if these were smoothed out, writes : 

 " A moving molecule of inorganic matter does not 

 possess mind or consciousness, but it possesses a 

 small piece of mind-stuff. When molecules are so 

 combined together as to form the film on the under 

 side of a jellyfish, the elements of mind-stuff are so 

 combined as to form the faint beginnings of Senti- 

 ence." Even Tyndall declares, " The very molecules 

 appear inspired with the desire for union and growth." 

 Thus, up to the time of the vacuum-tube, 

 scientific opinion had drifted to and fro between 

 the mechanic conception of matter as mass and 

 motion, and the more or less metaphysical con- 

 ception which found it necessary to endow 

 matter with something like rudimentary mind, or 

 to analyse it into a conceptual figment. In the 

 main, however, opinion developed along mechanic, 

 atomic lines ; and in the following chapter we will 

 deal with the nature of the atom as conceived by 

 the modern atomic school. 



