Note 27 — Chapter II · POSITION TAKEN BY THE AUTHORS—PHYSICAL AXIOMS.

We are aware that a certain class of thinkers regard all matter and combinations of matter as in some unexplained sense alive. We will discuss this doctrine in another place; meanwhile it must be understood that we do not here allude to this peculiar life, which from its very conception must exist as truly in a dead body as in a living one; what we are discussing at present is individual consciousness of the ordinary recognised type.