Property and Common Sense 119 
persons of some of its descendants to reason with sufficient 
soundness. And what the ameeba is man is also; man is 
only a great many ameebas, most of them dreadfully 
narrow-minded, going up and down the country with their 
goods and chattels like gipsies in a caravan ; he is only a 
great many amcebas that have had much time and money 
spent on their education, and received large bequests of 
eee intelligence from those that have gone before 
em. 
The most incorporate tool—we will say an eye, or a 
tooth, or the closed fist when used to strike—has still some- 
thing of the on ego about it in so far as it is used; those 
organs, again, that are the most completely separate from 
the body, as the locomotive engine, must still from time 
to time kiss the soil of the human body, and be handled and 
thus crossed with man again if they would remain in work- 
ing order. They cannot be cut adrift from the most living 
form of matter (I mean most living from our point of view), 
and remain absolutely without connection with it for any 
length of time, any more than a seal can live without 
coming up sometimes to breathe ; and in so far as they 
become linked on to living beings they live. Everything 
is living which is in close communion with, and inter- 
permeated by, that something which we call mind or 
thought. Giordano Bruno saw this long ago when he made 
an interlocutor in one of his dialogues say that a man’s hat 
and cloak are alive when he is wearing them. ‘‘ Thy boots 
and spurs live,” he exclaims, ‘‘ when thy feet carry them ; 
thy hat lives when thy head is within it ; and so the stable 
lives when it contains the horse or mule, or even yourself ; ”’ 
nor is it easy to see how this is to be refuted except at a cost 
which no one in his senses will offer. 
It may be said that the life of clothes in wear and im- 
plements 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 out- 
