and
ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are
endowed with sensation and will (though, naturally, of the lowest
grade); they experience an inclination for condensation, a dislike
of strain; they strive after the one and struggle against the
other" (p. 78).

My desire is to criticise politely, and hence I refrain from
characterising this sentence as a physicist should.

"Every shade of inclination, from complete indifference to the
fiercest passion, is exemplified in the chemical relation of the
various elements towards each other" (p. 79).

"On those phenomena we base our conviction that even the _atom_ is
not without a rudimentary form of sensation and will, or, as it is
better expressed, of feeling (_aesthesis_) and inclination
(_tropesis_)--that is, a universal 'soul' of the simplest
character" (p. 80).

"I gave the outlines of _cellular_ psychology in 1866 in my paper
on 'Cell-souls and Soul-cells'" (p. 63).

Thus, then, in order to explain life and mind and consciousness by
means of matter, all that is done is to assume that matter possesses
these unexplained attributes.

What the full meaning of that may be, and whether there be any
philosophic justification for any such idea, is a matter on which I
will not now express an opinion; but, at any rate, as it stands, it is
not science, and its formulation gives no sort of conception of what
life and will and consciousness really are.

Even if it were true, it contains nothing whatever in the nature of
explanation: it recognises the inexplicable, and relegates it to the
atoms, where it seems to hope that further quest may cease. Instead of
tackling the difficulty where it actually occurs; instead of
associating life, will, and consciousness with the organisms in which
they are actually in experience found, these ideas are foisted into the
atoms of matter; and then the properties which have been conferred on
the atoms are denied in all essential reality to the fully developed
organisms which those atoms help to compose!

I show later on (Chapters V. and X.) that there is no necessary
justification for assuming that a phenomenon exhibited by an aggregate
of particles must be possessed by the ingredients of which it is
composed; on the contrary, wholly new properties may make their
appearance simply by aggregation; though I admit that such a
proposition is by no means obvious,