20 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



neighbours, is gradually and steadily giving way to 

 other and more recondite views as to its actual 

 properties. It may yet prove, and we believe will 

 yet prove, as immaterial in its nature as con- 

 sciousness itself; nay, in some combination or 

 other perhaps a most stable combination, the seat 

 and the source of all consciousness. And why 

 then this bugbear phantom apprehension of the 

 dynamical or materialistic view of Nature ? If by 

 materialism we mean the explanation of all Nature by 

 the properties of atoms : Thus sensibility, conscious- 

 ness, intelligence, reason, nay, even the sense of 

 morals, form part of one continuous scale of in- 

 tegration of unit elements of matter or mind-stuff. 

 If consciousness, reason, will, the sense of respon- 

 sibility, can be developed from the cell, as in 

 truth we know they can, why should we stop there 

 and not conclude that they may likewise have 

 developed from the material atoms ? For of the atom, 

 or as it is now the electron, we know nothing except 

 that it is a seat of force, of inertia and of motion, if it 

 is to explain merely the physical properties of things. 

 But if we find in the world around us not merely 

 aggregates of the inactive and unconscious but also of 

 active conscious things separated by the gulf between 

 activity and inactivity, thought and thoughtlessness, 

 and if we imagine all Nature to be made of units which 

 can in their aggregation assume activity or apparent 

 inactivity, motion or apparent rest, according to their 

 particular form of motion, we are at a loss to find why 

 in these units there should not also exist the elements 



