Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to header Skip to footer

Are there two kinds of matter?

From the June 2014 issue of The Christian Science Journal

Originally written in French, this article first appeared in the December 2013 French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish editions of The Herald of Christian Science. 


You may have seen a comic strip or a movie where a hasty individual walks into a pole or hits a glass door. In one of Marcel Pagnol’s movies (a famous French writer and filmmaker), someone kicks a hat, but underneath it some naughty pranksters have hidden a brick. Such sights may cause a jolt or elicit a cry from bystanders—as if they feel in themselves the pain that follows the shock. This very natural empathy exists only for the “human” victims, of course; no one would ever think of feeling compassion for a pole, a glass door, or a brick.

It would seem that two types of matter exist—inert, insensitive, unintelligent matter, and matter that is alive, sensitive, and intelligent. But is that true?

That question came to me as a result of the following experience: