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state of a body, whether that state be one of rest or of motion;" but Professor Barker means by it "motion itself;" and Dr Bastian understands by it "a mode of motion." If all professors of natural philosophy would use the word Force, and, I may add, the word Energy, in the same definite, intelligible, and self-consistent way as Professors Stewart and Tait, Clerk-Maxwell and Sir William Thomson, a vast amount of mental confusion would speedily pass away. In this reference, a perusal of Chap. III. of 'The Unseen Universe' cannot be too strongly recommended.

Both the scientific and the religious consequences of error as to the signification and relationship of energy and force may be very serious. To affirm of force what is true of energy is as great a mistake as to confound the birth-rate of a country with its population. In consequence of this error, Mr Herbert Spencer has transformed or transmogrified the grand law of the Conservation of Energy-the law that, "in any system of bodies whatever, to which no energy is communicated by external bodies, and which parts with no energy to external bodies, the sum of the various potential and kinetic energies remains for ever unaltered"-into a so-called law of the Persistence of Force-the dogma that "the quantity of force remains always the same"-which physical science wholly disowns. "The sole recorded case," observe Professors Stewart and Tait, "of true persistency or indestructibility of force which we recollect having ever met with, occurs in connection with Baron Munchausen's remarkable descent from the moon. It is, no doubt, a very striking case; but it is apparently unique, and it was not subjected to scientific scrutiny."

It is much to be regretted that professional critics and popular writers should have so generally gone to Mr Herbert Spencer's chapter on "The Persistence of Force" for enlightenment as to the subject of which it treats, although probably in no other eight consecutive pages in the English language are there so many physical and metaphysical errors combined. Many of these persons, not having had their senses educated by appropriate scientific instruction to discern between good and evil in such matters, have been under the delusion that in perusing the chapter indicated they were refreshing themselves with water drawn from the fountain of pure truth, when they were really intoxicating themselves with "the wine of the Borgias." The dreadful consequences which have sometimes resulted from this mistake may be seen exemplified in the case of "Physicus."

A number of Mr Spencer's errors regarding force are well refuted by Professor Birks in his 'Modern Physical Fatalism,' pp. 159-196.

On the nature and relationship of matter and force the three following works are important: Harms, 'Philosophische Einleitung in die Encyklopaedie der Physik;' Huber, 'Die Forschung nach der Materie;' and Dauriac, 'Des Notions de matière et de force dans les sciences de la nature.'

NOTE XVII., page 171.

MATERIALISM AND LIFE.

Materialism is obviously unproved so long as life is not shown to be a property or an effect of matter. Life has certainly not yet been shown to be either the one or the other. "The present state of knowledge," says Professor Huxley, in his article on "Biology," in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' "furnishes us with no link. between the living and the not-living."

Numerous definitions have been given of life, but even the best of these definitions appear to be seriously defective. Biology has not yet succeeded in forming a precise and accurate notion of what life is. Perhaps we must be content to understand by it, so far as it falls under the consideration of physical science, the cause of the direction and co-ordination of the movements or actions characteristic of bioplasmic matter.

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Mr Herbert Spencer (Principles of Biology, vol. i. pp. 60, 61) has well indicated the unsatisfactoriness of the definition of Schelling-"Life is the tendency to individuation;" of that of Richerand-"Life is a collection of phenomena which succeed each other during a limited time in an organised body;" of that of De Blainville'Life is the twofold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at once general and continuous;" and of that of Lewes "Life is a series of definite and successive changes, both of structure and composition, which take place within an individual without destroying its identity." Mr Spencer has also laboured to provide a better definition; and some writers suppose that his suc

cess has been almost complete. Thus Professor Bain (Logic, Part II. p. 258) says: "Choosing assimilation as a characteristic fact of bodily life, and reasoning as an example of mental life, and contrasting both with the characters of dead matter, Mr Herbert Spencer arrives at the following highly complex definition: 1. Life contains a process or processes of change. 2. The change is not a simple or individual act, but a series or succession of changes. 3. Life involves a plurality of simultaneous as well as successive changes. 4. The changes are heterogeneous, or various in character. 5. The various changes all combine to a definite result. 6. Finally, the changes are in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences. In sum: Life is a set of changes, simultaneous and successive, combined to a definite result, and in correspondence with external circumstances. Or, in a briefer form, Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. So carefully has the comparison been conducted, that no exception could be taken to any part of this definition. Every one of the particulars occurs in all living bodies, and in no kind of dead matter." This estimate I cannot but regard as much too favourable. There is not a single particular in Mr Spencer's definition which is not as characteristic of the action of a watch as of the life of a plant or animal. His so-called definition is a sort of expression of what is common to the manifestations of machinery, life, and mind; but it gives us no information either as to what mechanism, life, and thought are, or as to how we are to distinguish them. It professes to be a definition of life, but really leaves life wholly out of account, in order to facilitate the work incumbent on a materialistic philosophy. In fact, Mr Spencer has not

sought a definition in a rational way. It is vain to attempt to define life by generalising its own effects. Biologists of all schools have abandoned this method of procedure as utterly unscientific, and now seek to accomplish their aim by the experimental study of life in its simplest forms. The true method to be followed has perhaps never been so clearly traced as by the illustrious French physiologist recently deceased, M. Claude Bernard, in his 'Leçons sur phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux vegetaux' (1878). M. Bernard has been often claimed as a materialist and as a positivist; but, in reality, his profound physiological science led him to results fatal both to materialism and to positivism; and a careful study of the work mentioned will render impossible the acceptance of all definitions of the kind to which that of Mr Spencer belongs-definitions based on a merely outside or superficial view of the manifestations of life.

Science is not only entitled but bound to trace the stream of life back as far as it can. The hypothesis of Mr Darwin, that all terrestrial organisms may have originated in a single primordial germ, which was produced when the earth was fitted to receive it, is a perfectly legitimate scientific hypothesis, although, of course, it should not be believed until it is proved. Equally legitimate in a scientific point of view is the hypothesis that life did not originate on this earth, but has come to it from remote and older worlds. This hypothesis has been presented in two forms.

1. According to M. Edgar Quinet (La Création, T. ii. L. xi. ch. ii.), Professor Preyer (Deutsche Rundschau, Heft 7), and Dr O. Zacharias (Athenæum, Bd. i. pp. 413-429), life is not fixed and limited to certain points

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