the skin, and finding that even this has not freed it from all
extraneous matter, flay it alive in the hope that if we grub down
deep enough we shall come upon it in its pure unalloyed state free
from all inconvenient complication through intermixture with
anything alien to itself. Then, indeed, we can docket it, and
pigeon-hole it for what it is; but what can we do with it till we
have got it pure? We want to account for things, which means that
we want to know to which of the various accounts opened in our
mental ledger we ought to carry them--and how can we do this if we
admit a phenomenon to be neither one thing nor the other, but to
belong to half-a-dozen different accounts in proportions which often
cannot even approximately be determined? If we are to keep accounts
we must keep them in reasonable compass; and if keeping them within
reasonable compass involves something of a Procrustean arrangement,
we may regret it, but cannot help it; having set up as thinkers we
have got to think, and must adhere to the only conditions under
which thought is possible; life, therefore, must be life, all life,
and nothing but life, and so with death, free will, necessity,
design, and everything else. This, at least, is how philosophers
must think concerning them in theory; in practice, however, not even
John Stuart Mill himself could eliminate all taint of its opposite
from any one of these things, any more than Lady Macbeth could clear
her hand of blood; indeed, the more nearly we think we have
succeeded the more certain are we to find ourselves ere long mocked
and baffled; and this, I take it, is what our biologists began in
the autumn of 1879 to discover had happened to themselves.

For some years they had been trying to get rid of feeling,
consciousness, and mind generally, from active participation in the
evolution of the universe. They admitted, indeed, that feeling and