130 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



of them dreadfully narrow-minded, going up and down 

 ■the country with their goods and chattels like gipsies 

 in a caravan ; he is only a great many amcebas that 

 have had much time and money spent on their educa- 

 tion, and received large bequests of organised intelli- 

 gence from those that have gone before them. 



The most incorporate tool — we will say an eye, or a 

 tooth, or the closed fist when used to strike — has still 

 something of the Tion ego about it in so far as it is used ; 

 those organs, again, that are the most completely sepa- 

 rate from the body, as the locomotive engine, must 

 still from time to time kiss the soil of the human 

 body, and be handled and thus crossed with man 

 again if they would remain in working order. They 

 cannot be cut adrift from the most living form of 

 matter (I mean most living from our point of view), 

 and remain absolutely without connection with it for 

 any length of time, any more than a fish can live 

 without coming up sometimes to breathe ; and in so far 

 as they become linked on to living beings they live. 

 Everything is living which is in close communion with, 

 and inter-permeated by, that something which we call 

 mind or thought. Giordano Bruno saw this long ago 

 when he made an interlocutor in one of his dialogues 

 say that a man's hat and cloak are alive when he 

 is wearing them, " Thy boots and spurs live," he 

 exclaims, " when thy feet carry them ; thy hat lives 

 when thy head is within it ; and so the stable lives 

 when it contains the horse or mule, or even yourself;'' 

 nor is it easy to see how this is to be refuted except 

 at a cost which no one in his senses will offer. 



