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eye, and yet brings us to the verge of the seen, if not really 
into the unseen. Life in an object is self-movement. No one 
thinks of an object as alive merely because it is in motion; it 
must move itself in order to be alive even to the eye, or to 
any other organ of sense. Whether it is the life of animal or 
of vegetable, in order to be life at all, it must be motion having 
its true origin in the living animal or plant. It must not merely 
be moved — it must move itself. Mechanical movements are 
not life ; magnetic movements and chemical combinations, 
however forcible, are not life. You may call them by that 
name, but you cannot think of them in the true thought, even 
in materialism, which belongs to life itself. 
3. It is this self-moving which constrains us to reason about 
life as we never dream of reasoning about any other form of 
motion. It is this which compels us logically to look beyond 
the region of observation to which the material eye and lens 
are confined, and with another eye which needs no microscope 
to see, so to speak, that which neither telescope nor microscope 
can reveal. Thoughts cannot be seen by means of the micro- 
scope, yet thoughts are surely as real as the movements of 
vibrios ; that which thinks cannot be purified by being 
passed through potassium, yet it is as real as the air which 
may be so affected ; the substances which think cannot 
be “ resolved 99 by the telescope, yet they are at least as 
truly existent as the nebulse. When fairly in the midst of true 
thoughts, such as surround the idea of life, we speak of it as 
a force and not as a movement. It is now no longer motion, 
but that power which moves. The problem of life, then, is 
not the problem of a movement, but of a faculty. It takes us 
back beyond the motion which can be seen to the motive 
entity which cannot be seen. 
4. To pure materialism, the dormant seed or germ is not 
alive. It is not in motion, and that which is not in motion in 
strict materialism is not living. A materialist regards a fresh 
though dormant seed as alive ; but when he does so, he departs 
from his materialism. He goes beyond “ phenomena,” for 
there is no such phenomenon as lets life be seen so long as 
there is no visible movement in the germ. Place that germ 
under the microscope while as yet it is not affected by the 
conditions of growth, and there is nothing to be seen which 
tells of actual life. The strictest materialist knows that there 
is life there — that there is something essentially the opposite 
of that which is where the germ has been deprived of its 
vitality. That something is life ; but he does not know it — 
he cannot possibly know it — except by reasoning, which in- 
forms of that which cannot be seen or in any way subjected 
