172 LUCK, OR CUNNING ? 



swallowed up in life, just as in the other case life was 

 swallowed up in death. Are we to confiue it to the 

 body ? If so, to the whole body, or to parts ? And if 

 to parts, to what parts, and why ? The only way out 

 of the difficulty is to rehabilitate contradiction in 

 terms, and say that everything is both alive and dead 

 at one and the same time — some things being much 

 living and little dead, and others, again, much dead 

 and little living. Having done 'this we have only got 

 to settle what a thing is — when a thing is a thing 

 pure and simple, and when it is only a congeries of 

 things — and we shall doubtless then live very happily 

 and very philosophically ever afterwards. 



But here another difficulty faces us. Common 

 sense does indeed know what is meant by a " thing " 

 or " an individual," but philosophy cannot settle either 

 of these two points. Professor Mivart made the 

 question " What is a thing ? " the subject of an article 

 in one of our leading magazines only a very few years 

 ago. He asked, but he did not answer. And so 

 Professor Moseley was reported (Times, January i6, 

 1885) as having said that it was "almost impossible" 

 to say what an individual was. Surely if it is only 

 " almost " impossible for philosophy to determine this, 

 Professor Moseley should have at any rate tried to do 

 it; if, however, he had tried and failed, which from 

 my own experience I should think most likely, he 

 might have spared his " almost." " Almost " is a 

 very dangerous word. I once heard a man say that 

 an escape he had had from drowning was " almost " 

 providential. The difficulty about defining an indi- 



