I could have spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but
seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the
interrupted monologue as if nothing had occurred:

"Doubtless you do not hold with those (I need not name them to a man
of your reading) who have taught that all matter is sentient, that
every atom is a living, feeling, conscious being. _I_ do. There is
no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct
with force, actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in
its environment and susceptible to the contagion of higher and
subtler ones residing in such superior organisms as it may be brought
into relation with, as those of man when he is fashioning it into an
instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and
purpose--more of them in proportion to the complexity of the
resulting machine and that of its work.

"Do you happen to recall Herbert Spencer's definition of 'Life'? I
read it thirty years ago. He may have altered it afterward, for
anything I know, but in all that time I have been unable to think of
a single word that could profitably be changed or added or removed.
It seems to me not only the best definition, but the only possible
one.

"'Life,' he says, 'is a definite combination of heterogeneous
changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with
external coexistences and sequences.'"

"That defines the phenomenon," I said, "but gives no hint of its
cause."