Conclusion 177 



start with, our getting as many million pounds as we have 

 a fancy for is only a question of time, but without the 

 initial millionth of a millionth of a millionth part, we shall 

 get no increment whatever. A little leaven will leaven the 

 whole lump, but there must be some leaven. 



I will here quote two passages from an article already 

 quoted from on page 55 of this book. They run : — 



" We are growing conscious that our earnest and most 

 determined efforts to make motion produce sensation and 

 volition have proved a failure, and now we want to rest a 

 little in the opposite, much less laborious conjecture, and allow 

 any kind of motion to start into existence, or at least to 

 receive its specific direction from psychical sources ; sensation 

 and volition being for the purpose quietly insinuated into 

 the constitution of the ultimately moving particles."' 



And: — 



" In this light it can remain no longer surprising that we 

 actually find motility and sensibility so intimately inter- 

 blended in nature. "2 



We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as 

 living, in respect of the qualities it has in common with 

 the organic, rather than the organic as non-living in re- 

 spect of the qualities it has in common with the inorganic. 

 True, it would be hard to place one's self on the same 

 moral platform as a stone, but this is not necessary ; it is 

 enough that we should feel the stone to have a moral 

 platform of its own, though that platform embraces little 

 more than a profound respect for the laws of gravitation, 

 chemical af&nity, &c. As for the difficulty of conceiving 

 a body as living that has not got a reproductive system — 

 we should remember that neuter insects are living but are 

 believed to have no reproductive system. Again, we 

 should bear in mind that mere assimilation involves all 



1 " The Unity of the Organic Individual," by Edward Mont- 

 gomery. Mind, October 1880, p. 477. 

 ' Ibid,, p. 483. 



