45 LIFE: ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 
that life is not in itself a special energy, but 
that it is merely that which directs or con¬ 
trols it. It is, however, difficult to see how 
anything which is not in itself energy, can con¬ 
trol or direct some other energy. It would 
appear just as difficult for an abstract thought 
to affect a flowing energy, as it would be for 
(say) the idea of a beefsteak to couple-together 
two pullman cars! 
Certainly the matter of the brain cannot in 
itself “think.” There is no more reason why 
a certain specific nervous structure should give 
rise to active consciousness, than that any oth¬ 
er complex living material should do so. The 
question is: Does consciousness somehow arise 
from the flow of the nervous currents within 
the brain? Materialistic science says that the 
activities of the mind are somehow synonymous 
with these nervous currents. Yet there are 
other nervous currents traveling about all over 
the body, which do not give rise to self-con¬ 
sciousness. Why is it that they should do so 
in the special organ of thought, known as the 
brain? 
It must be remembered that mind is not the 
same thing as life. Parts of a body may be 
alive, while other parts of it are dead. After 
a chicken’s head has been chopped off, it often 
gets up and runs about for a half-a-minute or 
more, and will even show certain signs of act¬ 
ive direction of the body, and will pick itself 
up if it stumbles over an object, etc. It is 
well-known, also, that after the conscious life 
of an organism has ceased, its bodily life con¬ 
tinues for some time. This is the so-called 
