How I wrote " Life and Habit " 15 



once break down the wall of partition between the organic 

 and inorganic, the inorganic must be living and conscious 

 also, up to a certain point. 



I have been at work on this subject now for nearly 

 twenty years, what I have pubhshed being only a small 

 part of what I have written and destroyed. I cannot, 

 therefore, remember exactly how I stood in 1863. Nor 

 can I pretend to see far into the matter even now ; for 

 when I think of life, I find it so difficult, that I take refuge 

 in death or mechanism ; and when I think of death or 

 mechanism, I find it so inconceivable, that it is easier to 

 call it life again. The only thing of which^I am sure is, 

 that the distinction between the organic and inorganic 

 is arbitrary ; that it is more coherent with our dther 

 ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every 

 molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the 

 breaking up of an association or corporation, than to 

 start with inanimate molecules and smuggle life into 

 them ; and that, therefore, what we call the inorganic 

 world must be regarded as up to a certain point living, 

 and instinct, within certain limits, with consciousness, 

 volition, and power of concerted action. It is only of late, 

 however, that I have come to this opinion. 



One must start with a hypothesis, no matter how much 

 one distrusts it ; so I started with man as a mechanism, 

 this being the strand of the knot that I could then pick at 

 most easily. Having worked upon it a certain time, I 

 drew the inference about machines becoming animate, 

 and in 1862 or 1863 wrote the sketch of the chapter on 

 machines which I afterwards rewrote in " Erewhon." 

 This sketch appeared in the Press, Canterbury, N.Z., June 

 13, 1863 ; a copy of it is in the British Museum. 



I soon felt that though there was plenty of amusement 

 to be got out of this line, it was one that I should have to 

 leave sooner or later ; I therefore left it at once for the 

 view that machines were limbs which we had made, and 

 carried outside our bodies instead of incorporating them 



