But bits of living, Joseph says – the innocent, fraternal or spiteful eating of oysters – will elude the scientist’s scrutiny. They belong to a different pattern of explanation, one that speaks of intention and purpose, motive and character. Bits of living are not independent links in a causal chain (as the movements of bodies are) but have their identity as parts within a whole. The unity, harmony and beauty of that whole constitutes goodness in human life. What animates the ethical rather than physical life is consciousness of a whole ‘all-embracing form of life’, and it is this idea, rather
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