How I wrote " Life and Habit " 13 



I first asked myself whether life might not, after all, 

 resolve itself into the complexity of arrangement of an 

 inconceivably intricate mechanism. Kittens think our 

 shoe-strings are alive when they see us lacing them, because 

 they see the tag at the end jump about without under- 

 standing all the ins and outs of how it comes to do so. 

 " Of course," they argue, " if we cannot understand how a 

 thing comes to move, it must move of itself, for there can 

 be no motion beyond our comprehension but what is 

 spontaneous ; if the motion is spontaneous, the thing 

 moving must be alive, for nothing can move of itself or 

 without our understanding why unless it is alive. Every- 

 thing that is alive and not too large can be tortured, and 

 perhaps eaten ; let us therefore spring upon the tag " ; 

 and they spring upon it. Cats are above this ; yet give 

 the cat something which presents a few more of those 

 appearances which she is accustomed to see whenever she 

 sees life, and she will fall as easy a prey to the power which 

 association exercises over all that lives as the kitten 

 itself. Show her a toy-mouse that can run a few yards 

 after being wound up ; the form, colour, and action of a 

 mouse being here, there is no good cat which will not con- 

 clude that so many of the appearances of mousehood 

 could not be present at the same time without the presence 

 also of the remainder. She will, therefore, spring upon 

 the toy as eagerly as the kitten upon the tag. 



Suppose the toy more complex still, so that it might 

 run a few yards, stop, and run on again without an addi- 

 tional winding up ; and suppose it so constructed that it 

 could imitate eating and drinking, and could make as 

 though the mouse were cleaning its face with its paws. 

 Should we not at first be taken in ourselves, and assume 

 the presence of the remaining facts of life, though in 

 reality they were not there ? Query, therefore, whether 

 a machine so complex as to be prepared with a correspond- 

 ing manner of action for each one of the successive emer- 

 gencies of life as it arose, would not take us in for good 



