“From the first discussions which arose on this subject, I have ventured to maintain that . . . the phrase ‘natural-selection’ represented no true physical cause, still less the complete set of causes requisite to account for the orderly procession of organic forms in Nature; that in so far as it assumed variations to arise by accident it was not only essentially faulty and incomplete, but fundamentally erroneous; in short, that its only value lay in the convenience with which it groups under one form of words, highly charged with metaphor, an immense variety of causes, some purely mental, some purely vital, and others purely physical or mechanical.”

CHAPTER XI—­The Way of Escape

To sum up the conclusions hitherto arrived at.  Our philosophers have made the mistake of forgetting that they cannot carry the rough-and-ready language of common sense into precincts within which politeness and philosophy are supreme.  Common sense sees life and death as distinct states having nothing in common, and hence in all respects the antitheses of one another; so that with common sense there should be no degrees of livingness, but if a thing is alive at all it is as much alive as the most living of us, and if dead at all it is stone dead in every part of it.  Our philosophers have exercised too little consideration in retaining this view of the matter.  They say that an amoeba is as much a living being as a man is, and do not allow that a well-grown, highly educated man in robust health is more living than an idiot cripple.  They say he differs from the cripple in many important respects, but not in degree of livingness.  Yet, as we have seen already, even common sense by using the word “dying” admits degrees of life; that is to say, it admits a more and a less; those, then, for whom the superficial aspects of things are insufficient should surely find no difficulty in admitting that the degrees are more numerous than is dreamed of in the somewhat limited philosophy which common sense alone knows.  Livingness depends on range of power, versatility, wealth of body and mind—­how often, indeed, do we not see people taking a new lease of life when they have come into money even at an advanced age; it varies as these vary, beginning with things that, though they have mind enough for an outsider to swear by, can hardly be said to have yet found it out themselves, and advancing to those that know their own minds as fully as anything in this world does so.  The more a thing knows its own mind the more living it becomes, for life viewed both in the individual and in the general as the outcome of accumulated developments, is one long process of specialising consciousness and sensation; that is to say, of getting to know one’s own mind more and more fully upon a greater and greater variety of subjects.  On this I hope to touch more fully in another book; in the meantime I would repeat that the error of our philosophers consists in not having borne in mind that when they quitted the ground on which common sense can claim authority, they should have reconsidered everything that common sense had taught them.