 To give a materialist account of life and consciousness, Collins needs to show that from lifeless and unthinking matter one can get life and thought. In his “Letter to Dodwell” Collins claims that there are material systems all about us whose parts do not have the properties found in the whole. He gives the example of a rose that has the power to produce its sweet scent in us, while the particles that compose it individually do not have this power (Clarke 1738 [1928: 751]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 48–9). These material systems provide models and analogies to understand how life and consciousness can arise from lifeless and thoughtless particles. Thus, from the beginning, Collins is arguing that consciousness is an emergent property, i.e. a property had by the whole, but not by the parts that compose that whole.