The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.

This can be found by comparing one degree of "livingness" original: "livingness"; the author uses this term to describe the quality or intensity of being alive with another. There is, of course, one sense in which the quality of being alive does not admit of degrees; but there is another sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to the life within a plant, but we realize that it is something very different from the life of an animal.

Again, what average boy would not prefer a fox terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog, and the boy are all equally alive; but there is a difference in the quality of their life about which no one can have any doubt, and no one would hesitate to say that this difference lies in the degree of intelligence.

In whatever way we turn the subject, we shall always find that what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence that places the animal higher in the scale of being The "Scale of Being" or "Great Chain of Being" is a historical philosophical concept describing a strict hierarchical structure of all matter and life. than the plant, the man higher than the animal, and the intellectual man higher than the savage.

The increased intelligence calls into activity "modes of motion" The author uses this phrase to describe the internal energy or vibrations that characterize different states of matter and mind. of a higher order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more completely the mode of motion is under its control; and as we descend in the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding increase in automatic motion that is not subject to the control of a self-conscious power.