PROPERTY AND COMMON SENSE. 13,1 



, It may be said that the life of clothes in wear and 

 implements in use is no true life, inasmuch as it differs 

 from flesh and blood life in too many and important 

 respects ; that we have made up our minds about not 

 letting life outside the body too decisively to allow the 

 question to be reopened ; that if this be tolerated we 

 shaU have societies for the preventicn of cruelty to 

 chairs and tables, or cutting clothes amiss, or wearing 

 them to tatters, or whatever other absurdity may occur 

 to idle and unkind people ; the whole discussion, there- 

 fore, should be ordered out of court at once. 



I admit that this is much the most sensible position 

 to take, but it can only be taken by those who turn 

 the deafest of deaf ears to the teachings of science, and 

 tolerate no going even for a moment below the surface 

 of things. People who take this line must know how 

 to put their foot down firmly in the matter of closing 

 a discussion. Some one may perhaps innocently say 

 that some parts of the body are more living and vital 

 than others, and those who stick to common sense may 

 allow this, but if they do they must close the discussion 

 on the spot ; if they listen to another syllable they are 

 lost ; if they let the innocent interlocutor say so much 

 as that a piece of well-nourished healthy brain is more 

 living than the end of a finger-nail that wants cutting, 

 or than the calcareous parts of a bone, the solvent will 

 have been applied which will soon make an end of 

 common sense ways of looking at the matter. Once 

 even admit the use of the participle " dying," which 

 involves degrees of death, and hence an entry, of death 

 in .part into a living body, and common sense must 



