Part 41 (2/2)
L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to be alive. Do you think you don't know whether you are alive or not?
(ISABEL _skips to the end of the room and back._)
L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and you and I may call that being alive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 'mode of motion.' It requires a certain quant.i.ty of heat to take you to the sideboard; and exactly the same quant.i.ty to bring you back again. That's all.
ISABEL. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot.
L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, you might have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried round the room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way.
ISABEL. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried myself.
L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makes a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off from the rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive.
VIOLET (_indignant_). Oh, surely--surely that cannot be so. Is not all the life of the soul in communion, not separation?
L. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; and besides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children.
We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (_The younger children are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing by experience, that all conversations in which the word 'communion' occurs, are unintelligible, think better of it._) Meantime, for broad answer about the atoms. I do not think we should use the word 'life,' of any energy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a young animal are properly called 'alive' with respect to the force belonging to those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to be chiefly external, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individual form, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limiting laws must be observed.
MARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal and a tree.
L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this, just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome.
Rocks have always been called 'living' in their native place.
MARY. There's one question more; then I've done.
L. Only one?
MARY. Only one.
L. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two?
MARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable.
L. Let me hear it.
MARY. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of the whole playground. Now, what playground have the minerals? Where are they scattered before they are crystallised; and where are the crystals generally made?
L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it is only one, it is a wide one.
MARY. I did not say anything about the width of it.
L. Well, I must keep it within the best compa.s.s I can. When rocks either dry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk; and cracks, or open s.p.a.ces, form in them in all directions. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water, sometimes by vapour, sometimes n.o.body knows how, crystallisable matter is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself in these open s.p.a.ces, so as to bind the rock together again, with crystal cement. A vast quant.i.ty of hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities are generally filled with various crystals.
MARY. But where does the crystallising substance come from?
L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;--or with mineral vapour;--or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There's no end to the 'may be's.' But all that you need fancy, for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in Derbys.h.i.+re, are traversed by liquids or vapour containing certain elements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallise on the cave walls.
<script>