Being.—The mystery of existence may be lightly touched upon. The fact that anything whatever—even a stone—exists, raises unanswerable questions of whence and why. It is instructive to think of some rocks as agglomerations of sand, and of sand as water-worn fragments of previous rock; so that, even here, there arises a sense of infinitude.
Alive.—The nature of life and, consequently, of death is unknown, but life is associated with rapid chemical changes in complex molecules, and is characterised by the powers or faculties of assimilation, growth, and reproduction. It is a property we share with all animals and also with plants. Children should not be told this in bald fashion, but by judicious questioning should be led to perceive the essence of it for themselves. Soon after they realise what is meant by life, some of them will perceive that it has an enormous range of application, and will think of flowers as possessing it also: being subject like all living things to disease and death.
What plants do not possess is the specifically animal power of purposed locomotion, of hunting for food and comfort, with its associated protective penalty of pain.
Conscious.—Here we come to something specially distinctive of higher animal life. Probably it makes its incipient appearance low down in the scale, in vague feelings of pain or discomfort, and of pleasure; though it is not likely that worms are as conscious as they appear to us to be. In its higher grades consciousness means awareness of the world and of ourselves, a discrimination between the self and the external world—“self-consciousness” in its proper signification: an immense subject that can only be hinted at to children. They can, however, be taught to have some appreciation of the senses, or channels, whereby our experience of external nature is gained; and to perceive that the way in which we apprehend the universe is closely conditioned by the particular sense-organs which in the struggle for existence have been evolved by all the higher kinds of animal life,—organs which we men are now beginning to put to the unfamiliar and novel use of scientific investigation and cosmic interpretation. What wonder if we make mistakes, and are narrow and limited in our outlook!
Digression on the Senses
Our fundamental interpretative sense is that of touch—the muscular sense generally. Through it we become aware of space, of time, and of matter. The experience of space arises from free motion, especially locomotion; speed is a direct sensation; and time is the other factor of speed. Time is measured by any uniformly moving body—that is by space and speed together. Muscular action impeded, the sense of force or resistance, is another primary sensation; and by inference from this arises our notion of “matter,” which is sometimes spoken of as a permanent possibility of sensation. Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, are all inferences from varieties of touch. Another sense allied to touch is that of temperature, whereby we obtain primitive ideas concerning heat. Then there are the chemical senses of taste and smell; and lastly, the two senses which enable us to draw inferences respecting things at a distance. These two attract special attention; for the information which they convey, though less fundamental than that given by the muscular sense, is of the highest interest and enjoyment.
The ear is an instrument for the appreciation of aerial vibrations, or ripples in the air. They may give us a sense of harmony; and in any case they enable us to infer something concerning the vibrating source which generated them, so that we can utilise them, by a prearranged code, for purposes of intelligent communication with each other—a process of the utmost importance, to which we have grown so accustomed that its wonder is masked.
The eye is an instrument for appreciating ripples in the ether. These are generated by violently revolving electric charges associated with each atom of matter, and are delayed, stopped, and reflected in various ways, by other matter which they encounter in their swift passage through the ethereal medium.
From long practice and inherited instinct we are able, from the small fraction of these ripples which enter our eyes, to make inferences regarding the obstructive objects from which they have been shimmered and scattered. It is like inferring the ships and boats and obstacles in a harbour from the pattern of the reflected ripples which cross each other on the surface of the water.
The precision and clearness with which we can thus gain knowledge concerning things beyond our reach, and the extraordinary amount of information that can be thus conveyed, are nothing short of miraculous: though, again, we are liable to treat sight as an everyday and commonplace faculty. We are not, however, directly conscious of the ripples, though they are the whole exciting cause of the sensation; our real consciousness and perception are of the objects which have invested the ripples with their peculiarities, have imprinted upon them certain characteristics, and made them what they are. The eye is able to analyse all this, as the ear analyses the tones of an orchestra.