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‹Better GutenbergThe Note-Books of Samuel ButlerOrganic and Inorganic · 86 of 532Contents›

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

by Samuel Butler

86 of 532 · Contents · Download EPUB

Organic and Inorganic

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.

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