In June, 1907, there were in all 710 branch churches. Of these, twenty-five were in Canada, fourteen in Britain, two in Ireland, four in Australia, one in South Africa, eight in Mexico, two in Germany, one in Holland, one in France, and the remainder in the States. There were also 295 societies not yet incorporated into churches. The total membership of the 710 churches was probably about 50,000. (In _Pulpit and Press_, p. 82, Mrs Eddy puts the number at 100,000 to 200,000; and this was in 1895. Some claim that the total number of adherents is as high as a million. But these are probably exaggerated estimates.) About one-tenth of these make their living by their faith. Here we come to the secret of Christian Science success.

There are about 400 authorised Christian Science "healers", and many who practise without diploma but not without pay. These people treat sick folks, receiving fees. Their method is to a.s.sure the patient that he is under a delusion in thinking himself ill, that matter is an illusion, that G.o.d is All, etc. It sounds very absurd. But the curious thing is that many people have been cured by this treatment, and--naturally--these people become ardent Christian Scientists. It is by the practical application that Christian Science as a religion lives and thrives. As to the kind of diseases cured, the most extravagant claims are made. In _Miscellaneous Writings_, p. 41, Mrs Eddy definitely states that "all cla.s.ses of disease" can be healed by her method. After careful sifting of much evidence, however, Dr Myers and his brother (F. W. H. Myers) found that no proof was forthcoming for the cure of definite organic disease by Christian Science methods.

(_Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. IX, p. 160; also _Journal_, vol. VIII, p. 247.) Undoubtedly they have been, and are continually, efficient in relieving, and even curing, many functional disorders which have resisted ordinary medical treatment--and it must be remembered that many functional derangements are as serious, subjectively, as grave organic disease--and consequently it is undeniable that Christian Science often does good. But it is probable that the same amount of good, and perhaps more, could be done by the hypnotic or suggestive treatment of a qualified medical man, or perhaps by other forms of "faith-healing". The Christian Scientist is using suggestion; but he couples it up with religion, and thus, perhaps--with some people--succeeds in driving the suggestion home with greater force. It is noteworthy that similar attempts are now being made in other directions--witness the Emmanuel movement in New York, the Faithists and various "psycho-therapeutic" societies in England, and the tendency in some quarters (Bishop of London) to return to anointing and laying on of hands by clergymen.

Psychologically, Mrs Eddy is at least cla.s.sified, if not entirely explained, by one word--monoideism. She was a person of one idea. These people, for whom we usually have the simpler term of "crank", are common enough. I have no personal acquaintance with the circle-squaring and perpetual-motion cranks mentioned by De Morgan (_The Budget of Paradoxes_), but I know a "flat-earth" crank, and am well acquainted with a "British-Israelite" crank, who seems to derive unspeakable joy--tempered only by his failure to convert me--from the thought that we Britishers are veritably the descendants of one or more of the Lost Tribes. All these people are conscious of a mission. They have had a revelation, and are anxious to impart it. Their efforts may not be due to the "last infirmity of n.o.ble mind", still less to a lower motive.

They may just be built that way. The majority of them, like my Lost-Tribes friend, get no hearing because of the inflexible pragmatism of a stiffnecked and utilitarian generation. "What difference does it make whether we are the Tribes or not?" asks the man in the street. And he pa.s.ses on with a shrug or a grin, according to temperament. This terrible pragmatic test makes short work of many amiable cranks. And it is just here that Christian Science scores its point; for it cures physical disease, thereby becoming intensely practical. Health is the chief "good" of life. Anything that will restore it to an ailing body commands immediate and universal respect. Christian Science therefore appeals, on its practical side, to the deepest thing in us--to the primal instinct of self-preservation. Hence its success.

It is possible to blame Mrs Eddy unjustly for her love of power as such.

She was not unique in this respect. The difference is that Mrs Eddy succeeded while the others have not, and are consequently not heard of.

My Lost-Tribes friend would be as autocratic as anybody if he had the chance; but his motive would not be greed of power, but rather the overmastering desire to push his cause, to proselytise, to promulgate his one idea, almost by force, if such a thing were possible. Most of us know a few fanatics of this kind. The objects of their devotion are varied--one is mad north-north-west, another south-south-east--but all suffer from a lack of balance, a lack of proper distribution of interest. Of course, we may cheerfully admit that we are all more or less specialists in our several departments, and that the line between sanity and insanity is rather arbitrary. We all seem more or less mad to those who do not agree with us.

The good and true part of Christian Science is its demonstration of the influence of mind on body, and of the usefulness of inducing mental states of an optimistic character. It may, of course, be said that we need no Mrs Eddy to tell us this. True, we don't. The great seers and poets have always taught optimism, and the influence of mind on body was medically recognised--more or less--long before even Quimby's time. But we must remember that different minds need different treatment--need their nutriment and stimulant in different forms, to suit the various mental digestions and receptive powers. Consequently, though we may prefer Browning for optimism and the doctors for hypnotic therapeutics, we need not complain if others prefer Mrs Eddy and her disciples.

If they get good from their way of putting things, and if that good manifests itself in their character and life--in their total reaction on the world--by all means let them continue to walk in their chosen way.

It would be wrong to try to turn them. The system "works"; therefore it is true for them. The tree is known by its fruits. And the fruits of Christian Science are undoubtedly often good. In this complex world nothing is unmixedly good, and harm is no doubt done occasionally. But, on the whole, it seems probable that Mrs Eddy, with all her hysteria and morbidities and rancours and queerness, has been a power for good in the world. Her writings meet a want which some people feel, or, rather, provide them with a useful impulse in the direction of physical and spiritual regeneration. If you can make a sick person stop brooding over his ailments and worrying over things in general, you have achieved something which enormously increases his chance of recovery; and if you can make him turn all his thoughts and energies in the direction of recovery, and all his emotional powers in the direction of love and goodwill to his fellow-men and towards G.o.d, there is no limit to the powers which may be put in operation. In spite of all our achievements in science--and they have been great--we are only, as Newton said, picking up pebbles on the sea-sh.o.r.e. Nature is boundless; we can fix no limits to her powers. And we know so little, really, about disease, that I am not at all prepared to deny the Christian Science claims, even with regard to organic disease. The distinction between organic and functional is in our own inabilities, not in the nature of the case; we call a disease "organic" when we find definite tissue-change, and "functional" when we do not; but in the latter case there must be some organic basis, though too small perhaps to be discoverable--say a lesion in a tiny nerve. Consequently I regard the question of Christian Science cures as entirely one of evidence. I keep an open mind. If I come across enough evidence, I will believe that it can cure tuberculosis of the lungs and other diseases, as claimed, whether I can understand how it does it or not. At present, like Dr Myers, I am not convinced; but I have seen enough of Christian Science results among my own friends to prevent me from denying anything. I merely suspend judgment. But I do believe that the power of the mind over the body is so great that almost anything is possible; and I think that the medical advance of the next half-century will be chiefly in this. .h.i.therto neglected direction.

I happen to know that this, or something very near this, was the strongly-held opinion of the late Professor William James of Harvard, who, in addition to being the most brilliant psychologist of his generation, was also a qualified doctor of medicine.

JOAN OF ARC

Great results often flow from small causes. Pascal said that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter the history of the world would have been different. Similarly it may be truly said that if a peasant girl of Domremy had not had hallucinations, France would now have been a British province. And it is curious to reflect that the Church which burnt her as a heretic and sorcerer has her, and her only, to thank for such hold as it still maintains on France, for the latter would have become Protestant if England had won. The Roman church now recognises this, and has beatified the Maid. The next step will be her canonisation as a saint. Thus does the whirligig of Time bring its revenges.

Jeanne d'Arc was born in the village of Domremy near Vaucouleurs, on the border of Champagne and Lorraine, on January 6th, 1412. She was taught to spin and to sew, but not to read or write, these accomplishments being beyond what was necessary for people in her station of life. Her parents were devout, and she was brought up piously. Her nature was gentle, modest, and religious, but with no physical weakness or morbid abnormality--on the contrary, she was exceptionally strong, as her later history proves.

At or about the age of thirteen, Jeanne began to experience what psychology now calls "auditory hallucinations". That is, she heard voices--usually accompanied by a bright light--when no visible person was present. This, of course, is a common symptom of impending mental disorder; but no insanity developed in Jeanne d'Arc. Startled she naturally was at first, but continuation led to familiarity and trust.

The voices gave good counsel of a commonplace kind, as, for instance, that she "must be a good girl and go regularly to church." Soon, however, she began to have visions: saw St Michael, St Catherine, and St Margaret; was given instructions as to her mission; eventually made her way to the Dauphin; put herself at the head of 6,000 men, and advanced to the relief of Orleans, which was besieged by the conquering English.

After a fortnight of hard fighting the siege was raised, and the enemy driven off. The tide of war had turned, and in three months the Dauphin was crowned King at Rheims, as Charles the Seventh.

At this point Jeanne felt that her mission was accomplished. But her wish to return to her family was over-ruled by king and archbishop, and she took part in the further fighting against the allied English and Burgundian forces, showing great bravery and tactical skill. But in November, 1430, in a desperate sally from Compiegne--which was besieged by the Duke of Burgundy--she fell into the enemy's hands, was sold to the English, and thrown into a dungeon at their headquarters in Rouen.

After a year's imprisonment she was brought to trial--a mock trial before the Bishop of Beauvais, in an ecclesiastical court. Learned doctors of the church did their best to entangle the simple girl in their dialectical toils; but she showed a remarkable power of keeping to her simple affirmations and of avoiding heretical statements. "G.o.d has always been my Lord in all that I have done". But the trial was only pretence, for her fate was already decided. She was burnt to death, amid the jeers and execration of a rabble of brutal soldiery, in a Rouen market-place on May 30th, 1431.

The life of the Maid supplies a problem which orthodox science cannot solve. She was a simple peasant girl, with no ambitions hankering after a career. She rebelled pathetically against her mission. "I had far rather rest and spin by my mother's side, for this is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it." She cannot be dismissed on the "simple idiot" theory of Voltaire, for her genius in war and her apt.i.tude in repartee undoubtedly prove exceptional mental powers, unschooled though she was in what we call education. We cannot call her a mere hysteric, for her health and strength were superb. A man of science once said to an Abbe: "Come to the Salpetriere Hospital, and I will show you twenty Jeannes d'Arc." To which the Abbe responded: "Has one of them given us back Alsace and Lorraine?"

There is the crux, as Andrew Lang quietly remarked.

The retort was certainly neat. Still, though the Salpetriere hysterics have not won back Alsace and Lorraine, it is nevertheless true that a great movement may be started, or kept going when started, by fraud, hallucination, and credulity. The Mormons, for example, are a strong body, but the origins of their faith will not bear much criticism. _The Book of Mormon_, handed down from heaven by an angel, is more than we can swallow. No one saw its "metal leaves"--from which Joseph Smith translated--except Joseph himself. We have our own opinion about Joseph's truthfulness. Somewhat similarly with spiritualism. The great movement is there, based partly on fact as I believe, but supported by some fraud and much ignorance and credulity. May it not have been somewhat thus with Jeanne? She delivered France, and her importance in history is great; but may not her mission and her doings have been the outcome of merely subjective hallucinations, induced by the brooding of her specially religious and patriotic mind on the woes of her country?

The army, being ignorant and superst.i.tious, would readily believe in the supernatural character of her mission, and great energy and valour would follow as a matter of course--for a man fights well when he believes that Providence is on his side.

That is the usual kind of theory in explanation of the facts. But it is not fully satisfactory. How came it--one may ask--that this untutored peasant girl could persuade not only the rude soldiery, but also the Dauphin and the court, of her Divine appointment? How came she to be given the command of an army? Surely a post of such responsibility and power would not be given to a peasant girl of eighteen, on the mere strength of her own claim to inspiration. It seems, at least, very improbable.

Now it seems (though the materialistic school of historians conveniently ignore or belittle it) that there is strong evidence in support of the idea that Jeanne gave the Dauphin some proof of the possession of supernormal faculties. In fact, the evidence is so strong that Mr Lang called it "unimpeachable"--and Mr Lang did not usually err on the side of credulity in these matters. Among other curious things, Jeanne seems to have repeated to Charles the words of a prayer which he had made mentally, and she also made some kind of clairvoyant discovery of a sword hidden behind the altar of Fierbois church. Schiller's magnificent dramatic poem "_Die Jungfrau von Orleans_," though unhistorical in some details, is substantially accurate on these points concerning clairvoyance and mind-reading.

As to the voices and visions, a Protestant will have a certain prejudice with regard to the St Michael, St Catherine, and St Margaret stories, though he may very possibly be wrong in his disbelief. But, waiving that, it may be true that some genuine inspiration was truly given to the Maid from the deeper strata of her own soul, and that these monitions externalised themselves in the forms in which her thought habitually ran. If she had been a Greek of two thousand years earlier, her visions would probably have taken the form of Apollo and Pallas Athene; yet they might equally well have contained truth and good counsel, as did the utterances of the Oracles.

And, speaking of the Greeks, we may remember that the wisest of that race had similar experiences. Socrates--the pre-eminent type of sanity and mental burliness--was counselled by his "daimon"; by a warning Voice which, truly, did not give positive advice like Jeanne's, but which intervened to stop him when about to make some wrong decision. Again--to jump suddenly down to modern times--Charles d.i.c.kens says in his letters that the characters of his novels took on a kind of independent existence, and that Mrs Gamp, his greatest creation, spoke to him (generally in church) as with an actual voice. In fact, all cases of creative genius, whether in literature, art, or invention, are examples of an uprush from unknown mental depths: the process is not the same as the intellectual process of reasoning. In these cases, as for instance with Socrates, Jeanne d'Arc, d.i.c.kens, the deeper strata of the mind may be supposed to send up thoughts so vigorously that they become externalised as hallucinations; not necessarily morbid or injurious, though of course many hallucinations are undoubtedly both. The inspiration rises from below the conscious threshold. It is as if "given"; and the normal conscious mind looks on in pa.s.sive astonishment.

_Alles ist als wie geschenkt_, says Goethe--and he knew, if anybody did.

A similar thing happens, on a more ordinary plane, when a problem that has baffled the working mind is solved in sleep. In short, the normal consciousness is not all there is of us; there are levels and powers below the threshold. And it seems likely that the new psychology is on the track of a better explanation of Socrates and Jeanne d'Arc, as well as of the nature of genius in general, than has yet been excogitated by the philosophers. Certainly these things supply interesting material for study, and many curious discoveries are now being made in this field of research.

IS THE EARTH ALIVE?

Some of the ancients thought the earth was an animal. It has its hard and soft parts, its bone and flesh--rock and soil--as the Norse cosmology pictured it; also its blood, of seas, rivers, and the like.

To a coast-dwelling people, the rhythmic inflow and outflow of the tides would suggest a huge slow blood-pulsation, or a breathing. And heat increases with depth, in mine or cave; fire spouts from Etna and Vesuvius; evidently the earth is hotter inside than at the surface, as animals are hotter inside than on their skins. Some such animal-notion was held by Plato, and by some of the later Stoics; though it does not seem to have been worked out in detail. And the Greek, Indian, or Egyptian theology which made the earth a G.o.ddess and the bride of Heaven or the sun, is still more indefinite, or is crudely anthropomorphic and primitive.

Modern approximations have been chiefly in poetry, and are pan-psychic rather than animistic; as in Pope's _Essay on Man_:

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and G.o.d the soul,

and in Wordsworth's _Tintern Abbey_ where the presence which disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts is felt to be the Spirit which has its dwelling in the light of setting suns and the round ocean and the living air:

A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear.

Emerson expresses the same thought in _Pan_ and in much of his prose--_Nature_, _The Over Soul_, _Self-Reliance_. William James, in early days before his pluralistic development, thought that an _anima mundi_ thinking in all of us was a more likely hypothesis than that of "a lot of individual souls"; and Leibnitz, among other metaphysical great ones, Spinozistically speaks of "un seul esprit qui est universel et qui anime tout l'univers". Finally, to quote a modern of the moderns, we find Mr H. G. Wells finely saying that "between you and me as we set our minds together, and between us and the rest of mankind, there is _something_, something real, something that rises through us and is neither you nor me, that comprehends us, that is thinking here and using me and you to play against each other in that thinking just as my finger and thumb play against each other as I hold this pen with which I write". (_First and Last Things_, p. 67.)

But these various poets and thinkers, while suggesting a soul-side of the material universe, have not ventured to attribute spirits to specific lumps of matter such as the planets. Science has banished those celestial genii. Kepler and Newton subst.i.tuted for them the "bald and barren doctrine of gravitation", to the disgust of the theologically orthodox. It is possible, however, that science did not banish these planetary spirits, but only prevented us from seeing them, by turning our eyes in another direction, towards the laws according to which the material universe works; as if we should become so absorbed in the chemistry and physics of blood oxidation, digestion, cerebral change, and the like, as to forget that the human body has a consciousness a.s.sociated with it. It may be that we are too materialistic in our astronomy. Perhaps Lorenzo was right, even about the music of the spheres; and that our deafness, not their silence, is the reason why we do not hear it.

The nineteenth century produced a thinker who revived the animistic idea in an improved form. He elaborated it into a system of philosophy, welding into it the discoveries of science, and leaving room for any further advance in that direction. At the same time he showed that his system was essentially religious, and indeed quite consistent with Christianity in its best interpretations. But his writings fell almost dead from the press, for he was before his time. The scientific men were materialists, and sneered at a system which recognised a spiritual world; while the orthodox Christians were scared by its evolutionary method and its acceptance of Darwinism when the latter arrived--for the philosophy preceded it--and also by the novelty of some of its ideas.

Gustav Theodor Fechner was born on April 19, 1801, at Gross-Sarchen in what is now Silesia, then under the Elector of Saxony. He studied at Leipzig, and was appointed professor of Physics at the University there, in 1834. He conducted several scientific journals, wrote text-books, translated Biot's _Physics_ (4 vols.) Thenard's _Chemistry_ (6 vols.) and a work on cerebral pathology; also edited an eight-volume _Encyclopaedia_ of which he wrote about a third himself, lectured, and made researches in electro-magnetism which injured his eyesight. His chief scientific work, _Elements of Psycho-Physics_, was published in 1859, additions being made in 1877 and 1882. "Fechner's Law", the fundamental law of psychophysics (that sensation varies in the ratio of the logarithm of impression) is now an internationally current term.

Men like Paulsen and Wundt do not hesitate to call Fechner master. His chief philosophical work is _Zend-Avesta_ (3 vols.) published in 1851, and rearranged and condensed in _Die Tagesansicht gegenuber der Nachtansicht_ (1879); but he published also many subsidiary volumes.

Only one of his works has appeared in English--the small volume on _Life After Death_--and even this had to be brought out by an American publisher! Yet Fechner is, as Professor William James said, "a philosopher in the great sense ... little known as yet to English readers, but destined, I am persuaded, to wield more and more influence as time goes on". (_A Pluralistic Universe_, pp. 135, 149.) The prophecy is already beginning to come true.

Fechner always begins with the known and indisputable, arguing thence to the unknown. His method is thus a.n.a.logical and scientific. It is the only method that a scientific generation will tolerate. Its results may be disputed, but so can the results of science. Even mathematics gives us no certainties, for something must always be taken for granted. In philosophising by a.n.a.logy, we do at least keep in close touch with experience; we do not evaporate the world into an "unearthly ballet of bloodless categories". And if the a.n.a.logies point mostly one way, with only weak ones pointing the other, the result may be at least acceptable as a working hypothesis, even if not "demonstrable".

Man is a living, thinking, feeling being. He is on the surface of a nearly spherical body, which he calls the earth, out of which his material part has arisen. The elements of his body are the same as those in the earth. His carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen are the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen of the coal measures, soils, atmosphere, oceans, of the earth. The calcium carbonate of his bones is the calcium carbonate of her rocks as seen in cliffs at Flamborough and Dover. He is bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. Sometimes he calls her Mother Earth, and involuntarily speaks the truth in jest. In Siberia the Tartar word for the earth is "Mamma"--a curious fact. Indeed, the bond between the earth and her children is much closer than in the case of a human mother and her child; for we remain, all our lives, actually _part_ of the planet's ma.s.s. If our bodies were suddenly annihilated, the earth's gravitative attraction would be altered, and the whole solar system would have to readjust itself to the slight diminution. We belong to the earth. We are a film of cells on her skin. In Piccadilly and the Bowery (and Throgmorton and Wall Streets?) we are--alas!--an eczematous patch.

But here it may be objected that man is more than a mere body. Quite true. Man has experiences of an order different from the material one.

You cannot express joy and sorrow by chemical equations or number of foot-pounds. Even if there is a material equivalent or necessary concomitant, of electrical or chemical change in cerebral tissue or what not, the fact of the non-material experience remains a reality. To indicate this side of human life, we call it the spiritual side. We say that man is matter and spirit, body and soul. This is quite justifiable and right, whether we can define the terms or not. Definition means explaining a word by means of others that are better known. And as we cannot get any closer to reality than our own experience, which _is_ reality to us, and as the two words conveniently cla.s.sify two great departments of experience, we justifiably say that we are soul and body. Very well; the body, then, when we die, returns to the earth, from which indeed it has not been severed, except as being a point at which a special kind of activity was manifested. What then of the soul? Shall it not return to the earth-soul, as the body returns to the earth-body?

Man has arisen out of the earth. And can the dead give birth to the living? Such an idea is self-contradictory. If the Earth has produced us, it cannot be really a mere dead lump, as nineteenth-century materialistic science regarded it. It must be alive. The fifteen hundred millions or so of human beings who live on its surface like microscopic insects on the body of an elephant, or like epidermis-cells on our own bodies, const.i.tute in their total weight and size only an almost infinitesimal proportion of the earth's ma.s.s. The earth is 8,000 miles in diameter; if human beings were so numerous that they could only stand up, wedged together all over its surface, tropics and poles, land and water--the latter covers seven-tenths of it--they would only be like a skin 1/200,000th part of an inch thick, on a globe a yard in diameter.

The total ma.s.s of all the living creatures on the earth's surface, including all animals and all vegetation, is almost inconceivably small, as compared with the ma.s.s of the earth. Is it not a trifle ludicrous to find some of these little creatures looking down so condescendingly on the remainder of the planet? Emerson was among the few who have seen the joke, for in _Hamatreya_ he satirises those who boast of possessing pieces of the earth:

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds: And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.

Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.

And the earth sings:

They called me theirs, Who so controlled me; Yet every one Wished to stay, and is gone, How am I theirs, If they cannot hold me, But I hold them?

A very natural objection to the idea of the earth being full of life and mind--as my body is full of my life and my mind--is that the inorganic part of the planet presents no evidence of such. It does not act as if it were alive and conscious. But this begs the whole question. If you decide beforehand that all evidence for the existence of mind must be the sort of phenomena exhibited by the things we call living, the business is settled, and it is clear that the inorganic kingdom is without consciousness. There is then no sign of mind anywhere except in that infinitesimally thin and indeed discontinuous skin which is made up of living individuals on the earth's surface. But is it not somewhat presumptuous to dogmatise thus? Why should mind always manifest itself in the same way? Non-living matter does not show vital activities, but it does show other activities, quite systematic and non-chaotic and comprehensible ones. How could "dead" matter have any activity at all? Even Haeckel postulates a sort of mind in the atom, and we have heard of "mind-stuff" before, from an equally determined materialist. Indeed, how can we rationalise the behaviour of phosphorus in oxygen but by saying that the two elements like each other so well that they rush to combine whenever possible? If carbon has great "affinity," showing a tendency to combine with many atoms of other elements in various complicated ways--at least as regards its favourite types--it is reasonable to regard it as a much-loving element--the polygamous Solomon of the elements. If fluorine will have nothing to do with other substances--except under protest, when persuaded by Miss Hydrogen, whose gaiety and levity sometimes overcome its sulkiness, bringing it also into the society of calcium and one or two other metals--we must say that fluorine is unsociable, morbidly self-centred, or perhaps mystically disposed, like Th.o.r.eau, happy by his pond, alone. Chemical affinity is the loves of the elements.

Rising to the next grade of complexity above atoms, we find that molecular movements, visible in the apparently representative Brownian movements of particles, recall the fidget of a bunch of midges, and thereby suggest a sort of life. They disobey the second law of thermodynamics, rising in a lighter liquid, as midges rise in the tenuous air. Of course no one can deny that in the things we call living there are phenomena not seen elsewhere, and some of these are quite probably not understandable at all, in terms of measurement or imagery, as we can understand the Brownian movements by irregular bombardment of molecules. We cannot understand the relation between a supposed brain-change and the corresponding mental fact. The two orders of being seem disjunctive. Perhaps these things are too close to us to be understood; perhaps we cannot understand life and consciousness because we are ourselves alive and conscious--as we cannot lift ourselves by pulling at our boot tops, and cannot see our own faces because the eyes that see are _in_ the face that is to be seen. Still the distinction between life at its lowest and non-life at its highest (crystals?) is so small that we may yet effect a smooth transition--may somehow see a continuity which now eludes us. And it seems likely that this will be effected by an extension of the mind-idea down into the inorganic, rather than by any explanation of life by physical and chemical concepts.