OF DEAD AND LIVING. 



in opinions, beliefs, or hopes that acceptance may involve, 

 provided only they are shown to rest upon facts of observa- 

 tion and experiment But should mere authority alone 

 induce any conscientious, thoughtful man, who has devoted 

 himself to the study of nature, to believe and confess that 

 a living, moving, growing thing is but a force-created, force- 

 impelled machine? When we watch the lowest forms of 

 living matter under high magnifying powers, do we learn 

 anything to justify us in accepting such a view ? When we 

 ask our confident teachers of the new philosophy to assist 

 us, we get dogmatic assertions, but nothing by way of 

 explanation. Grand words are freely used, but the terms 

 employed are not defined. It is, however, true enough, 

 that men eminent among philosophers, as well as some 

 of the most distinguished living physicists, chemists, and 

 naturalists, have accepted this physical theory of life. They 

 have taught that life is but a mode of ordinary force, and 

 that the living thing differs from the non-living thing, not in 

 quality, or essence, or kind, but merely in degree ; and yet 

 they cannot satisfactorily explain the difference between a 

 living thing and the same thing dead. They would perhaps 

 tell us that living and dead are only relative terms ; that 

 there is no absolute difference between the dead and living 

 states ; and that the thing which we call dead, is, after all, 

 only a few degrees less actively living than the thing we say 

 is alive. But is this sort of reasoning convincing, seeing 

 that although matter in the living state may suddenly pass 

 into the dead state, this same matter can never pass back 

 again into the living condition ? Those who advocate this 

 doctrine do not believe in the actual annihilation of force, 



B 2 



