both he and they use the same language, his opponents only half
mean what they say, while he means it entirely... We shall
endeavour [sic] to see the so-called inorganic as living, in
respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic,
rather than the organic as non- living in respect of the
qualities it has in common with the inorganic."]


CHAPTER VII

THE LIKENESS OF GOD

In my last chapter I endeavoured [sic] to show that each living
being, whether animal or plant, throughout the world is a
component item of a single personality, in the same way as each
individual citizen of a community is a member of one state, or as
each cell of our own bodies is a separate person, or each bud of
a tree a separate plant. We must therefore see the whole varied
congeries of living things as a single very ancient Being,
of inconceivable vastness, and animated by one Spirit.

We call the octogenarian one person with the embryo of a few days
old from which he has developed. An oak or yew tree may be two
thousand years old, but we call it one plant with the seed from
which it has grown. Millions of individual buds have come and
gone, to the yearly wasting and repairing of its substance; but
the tree still lives and thrives, and the dead leaves have life
therein. So the Tree of Life still lives and thrives as a single
person, no matter how many new features it has acquired during
its development, nor, again, how many of its individual leaves