The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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THE EPICUREAN CONTRAST 123
knows that even the phenomenon
of nutrition is not
wholly explicable by chemical and physical laws,
inasmuch as the wall of the intestine refuses to behave
like a mere dead membrane ;
and the botanist, just
because he is here dealing with living membranous
tissue, has ceased to explain the rise of the sap in a
tree simply by endosmose. The intervention of life in
the membrane makes all the difference. How, again,
in the case of Sensation, do atoms that are themselves
colourless, scentless, soundless (for, as said, they have
no secondary qualities), give rise by mere collocation
to colour, scent, sound ? How, still more, do we get
in this way the higher processes of Mind,
judgment, reasoning, thought,
conception,
so different, not only in
quantity, but in kind, from the properties of inorganic
matter? In consciousness and self-consciousness and
the processes of reflective thought, we have reached
something of the nature of an organic unity, whose
ruling feature is internal purposive development and
spontaneous activity. These chasms namely, between
the lifeless and the living, on the one hand, and, on
the other hand, between the merely animate or living
and the conscious thinking
life are the standing
difficulty for the Epicurean physics, as for pure material
ism in whatsoever age. If man is not "a mere
automaton," if consciousness be more than a bare
epiphenomenon or useless adjunct of brain process,
then mechanism cannot fully explain h im, or account for
his distinctive mental characteristics. "Ex nihilo
nihil fit
is the great principle
that Lucretius is con
stantly using. Nowhere is it more applicable than
here, against himself.