210 NATURAL SELECTION IX 
Matter is Force 
The foregoing considerations lead us to the very 
important conclusion that matter is essentially force, and 
nothing but force; that matter, as popularly understood, 
does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable. 
When we touch matter, we only really experience sensations 
of resistance, implying repulsive force; and no other sense 
can give us such apparently solid proofs of the reality of 
matter as touch does. This conclusion, if kept constantly 
present in the mind, will be found to have a most important 
bearing on almost every high scientific and philosophical 
problem, and especially on such as relate to our own conscious 
existence. 
and run the same course as the parent mass. This is growth and reproduction 
in their simplest forms ; and from such a simple beginning it is possible to 
conceive a series of slight modifications of composition, and of internal and 
external forces, which should ultimately lead to the development of more 
complex organisms. The LIFE of such an organism may, perhaps, be nothing 
added to it, but merely the name we give to the result of a balance of internal 
and external forces in maintaining the permanence of the form and structure of 
the individual. The simplest conceivable form of such life would be the dew- 
drop, which owes its existence to the balance between the condensation of 
aqueous vapour in the atmosphere and the evaporation of its substance. If 
either is in excess, it soon ceases to maintain an individual existence. Ido 
not maintain that vegetative life 2s wholly due to such a complex balance of 
forces, but only that it is conceivable as such. 
With consciousness the case is very different. Its phenomena are not 
comparable with those of any kind of matter subjected to any of the known 
or conceivable forces of nature ; and we cannot conceive a gradual transition 
from absolute unconsciousness to consciousness, from an unsentient organism 
to a sentient being. The merest rudiment of sensation or self-consciousness 
is infinitely removed from absolutely non-sentient or unconscious matter. 
We can conceive of no physical addition to, or modification of, an unconscious 
mass which should create consciousness ; no step in the series of changes 
organised matter may undergo, which should bring in sensation where there 
was no sensation or power of sensation at the preceding step. It is because 
the things are utterly incomparable and incommensurable that we can only 
conceive of sensation coming to matter from without, while life may be con- 
ceived as merely a specific combination and co-ordination of the matter and 
the forces that compose the universe, and with which we are separately 
acquainted. We may admit with Professor Huxley that protoplasm is the 
“matter of life” and the cause of organisation, but we cannot admit or con- 
ceive that protoplasm is the primary source of sensation and consciousness, or 
that it can ever of itself become conscious in the same way as we may perhaps 
conceive that it may become alive, 
