from within as well as of being acted on from without. In this respect every living plant and animal is unlike every dead plant and animal, and every inorganic object. Now, how can this power of acting from within, -one to which there is nothing properly analogous in lifeless matter,— come from without, from lifeless matter? How can mechanical and chemical forces result in a force which resists and rules themselves, and which enables that which possesses it to act of and for itself, in a faculty of adaptation to circumstances, of selective assimilation, growth, inherent renewal, and reproduction? Further, all that is living is, what nothing that is dead is, an end unto itself. A living being is no mere mean, but to a large extent an immanent whole-that is, one which has its reason of being, its ends of action, in itself. It is a unity of which all the elements, parts, and energies are co-ordinated by a central power to its self-preservation and self-perfection. But this implies plan and purpose, thought, foresight, and prophecy; and how are these to be accounted for by mere matter and motion?

I might appropriately, if time permitted, confirm and supplement what has just been said, by pointing out in the processes of nutrition and growth, in the healing and repairing of injured parts, and in propagation or reproduction, a number of distinctive characteristics which seem imperatively to

demand for their explanation more than merely mechanical and chemical causes. Enough has been said, however, I hope, to show that when Mr Spencer, or any other person, tells us that the argument against the materialistic hypothesis of the origin of life is one in which ignorance is made to do the part of knowledge, he gives a very unfair and inadequate view of it. The argument is based, first, on the universal and uniform experience which establishes the law omne vivum ex vivo; and secondly, on what observation and science inform us are the properties of inorganic powers on the one hand, and the distinctive features of life on the other. It is, consequently, based wholly on knowledge. And it is an argument of great strength, completely satisfying all the requirements of the methods both of agreement and of difference. Like all other arguments, however, as to the laws of nature, it does not demonstrate the impossibility -does not absolutely exclude the possibilitythat the law may in some unknown case or cases not have held good. This bare possibility Mr Spencer and the materialists eagerly lay hold of, and actually oppose and prefer to the positive argument. Because they can fancy that the powers of inorganic nature may once have acted. in a way in which they are never known to have acted, and in which they certainly never act now, they conclude that these powers did really once

act in that exceptional, not to say miraculous, manner. I should like to see it shown that this is not to make ignorance do the part of knowledge. In my opinion, the materialist charges upon his opponent the vice of his own reasoning.

But recent discoveries of science, we are told, go far to prove that there is no such chasm as is alleged between the dead and the living, the inorganic and organic. In support of this affirmation, however, real and relevant evidence cannot be found. It is true that until recently many chemists supposed that no organic substance could be artificially composed from inorganic constituents, and also true that a multitude of organic substances have now been so formed. The inference is that chemists may err and may have their errors corrected by experience and investigation, but certainly not that a single forward step has been taken in bridging over the gulf between life and death. Suppose every organic substance-even brain, blood, nerve, albumen, protoplasm itself— to be resolved, as I doubt not every organic substance may and will be resolved, into inorganic elements, and what follows if out of the elements involved no substance can be built up which is not dead, not one which manifests a single vital property? Simply that there is nothing even in the most elaborate organic structures, or in the corporeal parts and elements most closely associated

with vitality, which is essentially different from mere dust of the earth; that the entire body of man himself is but "dust and ashes," and that when you reach what is highest and most admirable in it, the border of the gulf between matter and the living soul is merely touched. How can any person be so illogical as to describe this as filling up or bridging over the gulf?

The assertion sometimes made that life has been proved to be merely a form of mechanical and chemical force, is without the least foundation. What has been proved is, that life does not create force, and that vital actions are carried on by means of mechanical and chemical forces. Life has been shown to do no mechanical or chemical work itself, but it has not been shown that it does not determine the direction in which mechanical and chemical forces work when they are within the living organism; and until that has been shown, nothing has been done to prove that it does not perform a function to which the ordinary physical powers are incompetent. The driver of a railway train does not add to the force generated in its engine, but he has notwithstanding a place and use. A master mason may expend no part of his strength in the actual construction of a house while he is superintending his labourers and builders, but who would consider the proof of that to be equivalent to a demonstration that

he had been of no service, or was even a purely mythical personage?

The argument from evolution to spontaneous generation is clearly not a strong one. The former may suggest a presumption in favour of the latter, but this cannot supply the place of, or warrant us to dispense with, direct and positive proof.

Is there a definite boundary-line between the plant and the animal? Is the organic world divisible into a vegetable and animal kingdom, or is there an intermediate kingdom protista? These two questions, it seems to me, are irrelevant in the materialistic controversy, and it is to be regretted that they should have been drawn into it, especially as biology, to which they properly belong, is not yet prepared to give them definite answers, and the danger of making ignorance do the part of knowledge in discussing them is extremely great.1

There is, then, a gulf between the dead and the living over which materialism throws no bridge. Science must confess that it needs a power not present in matter to account for life.

Mind, I remark next, presents to materialism a still greater difficulty. No kind of reasonable con-, ception can be formed of a process by which molecular changes will pass into or produce sensation, pleasure or pain, perception, memory, judgment,

1 See Appendix XVII.