320 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



to visit the earth and see what is going on there. But their 

 faculties are of such a nature that, though they have perfect 

 perception of all inanimate matter and of plants, they are 

 absolutely unable either to see, hear, or touch any animal living 

 or dead. Such beings would see everywhere matter in motion, 

 but no apparent cause of the motion. They would see dead 

 trees on the ground, and living trees being eaten away near 

 the base by axes or saws, which w^ould appear to move spon- 

 taneously; they would see these trees gradually become logs 

 by the loss of all their limbs and branches, then move about, 

 travel along roads, float down rivers, come to curious machines 

 by which they are split up into various shapes ; then move 

 away to where some great structure seems to be growing up, 

 where not only wood, but brick and stone and iron and glass 

 in an infinite variety of shapes, also move about and ultimately 

 seem to fix themselves in certain positions. Special students 

 among these spirit-inquirers would then devote themselves to 

 follow back each of these separate materials — the wood, 

 the iron, the glass, the stone, the mortar, etc. — to their sep- 

 arate sources; and, after years thus spent, would ultimately 

 arrive at the great generalisation that all came primarily out 

 of the earth. They would make themselves acquainted with 

 all the physical and chemical forces, and would endeavour to 

 explain all they saw by recondite actions of these forces. They 

 would argue that what they saw was due to the forces they 

 had traced in building up and modifying the crust of the 

 earth ; and to those who pointed to the result of all this ^' mo- 

 tion of matter " in the finished product — the church, the 

 mansion, the bridge, the railway, the huge steamship or cotton 

 factory or engineering works — as positive evidence of design, 

 of directive power, of an unseen and unknown mind or minds, 

 they would exclaim, " You are wholly unscientific ; we know 

 the physical and chemical forces at work in this curious world, 

 and if we study it long enough we shall find that known forces 

 will explain it all." 



If we suppose that all the smaller objects, even if of the 



