DORA. There now; you're going to be provoking, I know.
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 quantity of heat to take you to the
sideboard; and exactly the same quantity 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 crystallizes 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.