determination to think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to
get our thinking done for us. Let us then commence by enquiring what we
really mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness
which we attribute to matter.

At first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of
motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most
recent researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does
not go deep enough. It is now one of the fully-established facts of
physical science that no atom of what we call "dead matter" is without
motion. On the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light
of up-to-date science I know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass
are vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and
thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round
like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex
activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may
lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of
motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with
a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is,
therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the
distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must
go deeper than that. The solution of the problem will never be found by
comparing Life with what we call deadness, and the reason for this will
become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by comparing one
degree of livingness with another. There is, of course, one sense in which
the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees; but there is another
sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to
the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very
different from the livingness of an animal. Again, what average boy would
not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that