Something of the kind sometimes happens with lifeless things. When a
stone is carefully balanced on the top of a high wall, a mere touch will
send it toppling down to the ground. But when it has reached the ground
it stops there, and if you want to repeat the trick you must carry the
stone up to the top of the wall again. You know the toy made like a
mouse, which, when you touch it in a particular place, runs away
apparently of its own accord, as if it were alive. But it soon stops,
and when it has stopped you may touch it again and again without making
it go on. Not until you have wound it up will it go on again as it did
before. And every time you want it to run you must wind it up afresh.
Living animals move again and again, and yet need no winding up, for
they are always winding themselves up. Indeed, as we go on in our
studies we shall come to look upon our own bodies and those of all
animals as pieces of delicate machinery with all manner of springs,
which are always running down but always winding themselves up again.
=3. You are warm=; beautifully warm, even on the coldest winter day, if
you have been running hard; very warm if you are well wrapped up with
clothing, which, as you say, keeps the cold out, but really keeps the
warmth in. The bed you go to at night may be cold, but it is warm when
you leave it in the morning. Your body is as good as a fire, warming
itself and everything near it.
The bird too is warm, so is the dog and the horse, and every four-footed
beast you know. Some animals however, such as reptiles, frogs, fish,
snails, insects, and the like do not seem warm when you touch them. Yet
really they are always a little warm, and some times they get quite
warm. If you were to put a thermometer into a hive of bees when they are
busy you would find that they are very warm indeed. All animals are more
or less warm as long as they are alive, some of them, such as birds and
four-footed beasts, being very warm. But only so long as they are alive;
after death they quickly become cold. When you find a bird lying on the
grass quite still, not stirring when it is touched, to make quite sure
of its being dead you feel it. If it is quite cold, you say it has been
dead some time; if it is still warm, you say it is only just
dead--perhaps hardly dead, and may yet revive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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