The thread of life cannot be shorn between successive generations, except upon grounds which will in equity involve its being shorn between consecutive seconds, and fractions of seconds. On the other hand, it cannot be left unshorn between consecutive seconds without necessitating that it should be left unshorn also beyond the grave, as well as in successive generations. Death is as salient a feature in what we call our life as birth was, but it is no more than this. As a salient feature, it is a convenient epoch for the drawing of a defining line, by the help of which we may better grasp the conception of life, and think it more effectually, but it is a _façon de parler_ only; it is, as I said in “Life and Habit,” { 264a} “the most inexorable of all conventions,” but our idea of it has no correspondence with eternal underlying realities.
Finally, we must have evolution; consent is too spontaneous, instinctive, and universal among those most able to form an opinion, to admit of further doubt about this. We must also have mind and design. The attempt to eliminate intelligence from among the main agencies of the universe has broken down too signally to be again ventured upon—not until the recent rout has been forgotten. Nevertheless the old, far-foreseeing _Deus ex machinâ_ design as from a point outside the universe, which indeed it directs, but of which it is no part, is negatived by the facts of organism. What, then, remains, but the view that I have again in this book endeavoured to uphold—I mean, the supposition that the mind or cunning of which we see such abundant evidence all round us, is, like the kingdom of heaven, within us, and within all things at all times everywhere? There is design, or cunning, but it is a cunning not despotically fashioning us from without as a potter fashions his clay, but inhering democratically within the body which is its highest outcome, as life inheres within an animal or plant.
All animals and plants are corporations, or forms of democracy, and may be studied by the light of these, as democracies, not infrequently, by that of animals and plants. The solution of the difficult problem of reflex action, for example, is thus facilitated, by supposing it to be departmental in character; that is to say, by supposing it to be action of which the department that attends to it is alone cognisant, and which is not referred to the central government so long as things go normally. As long, therefore, as this is the case, the central government is unconscious of what is going on, but its being thus unconscious is no argument that the department is unconscious also.