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. Again, on the larger scale, may not cohesion, as well as chemical affinity, be a sort of affection; in this case a kind of wide social friendship--the "adhesive love" of Whitman, which is to supersede "amative love"--as against the fierce and narrow loves of the elements? A. C. Benson in _Joyous Gard_ (p. 128) quotes a geologist who says: It is not by any means certain that stones do not have a certain obscure life of their own; I have sometimes thought that their marvellous cohesion may be a sign of life, and that if life were withdrawn, a mountain might in a moment become a heap of sliding sand. Yes, and even in sand-grains there is cohesion of particles, and in the smallest particles huge numbers of molecules, and again--still smaller--atoms and electrons. Something elusive yet tremendously potent is still there, in the sand. It would be rash to call it dead and mindless. There seems more sense in admitting that there is something akin to what we know as life and mind in ourselves, permeating the material universe.