m 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
the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog,
and the boy are all equally _alive_; but there is a difference in the
quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no
one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of
intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find that
what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured
by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence that
places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the man
higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage. The
increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher
order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more
completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in
the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding
increase in _automatic_ motion not subject to the control of a
self-conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual from the expanded
self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of
visible forms which we speak of as "things," and from which
self-recognition is entirely absent.

We see, then, that the