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 Thoreau, happy by his pond, alone. Chemical affinity is the loves of the elements.