Whether it moved or not, for the ancients, everything was alive. Streams, ponds, mountains, forests, all had feelings, moods, and powers. This was an intuitive but straightforward way of regarding the world.

Centuries of philosophical debate have steered us toward separating matter and living organisms. For us, the "living" has its own traits: it grows, reacts, reproduces, and evolves. Unfortunately, just when we believe we have it all well sorted, we verify that clouds grow, molecules react, crystals reproduce, and galaxies evolve. Moreover, physics has verified that an idle stone, a still flower, and a bouncing deer are teeming with the same lively particles. So, we are back where we started. Our ancestors were right and, as Eternism confirms, life is everywhere.

We and the rest of Creation are gatherings of live Eternons. The universe is a continuum where one passes from a structure to another through subtle changes. From the simplest particle to the most sophisticated organism, we only have to climb steps of growing complexity and consciousness to embrace the whole phenomenon of life in its unrestricted meaning.