Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that
they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot
understand the animals’ and plants’ business, we have therefore denied
that it can understand anything whatever.
What we call inorganic is not so really, but the organisation is too
subtle for our senses or for any of those appliances with which we assist
them. It is deducible however as a necessity by an exercise of the
reasoning faculties.
People looked at glaciers for thousands of years before they found out
that ice was a fluid, so it has taken them and will continue to take them
not less before they see that the inorganic is not wholly inorganic.