LIFE OF A MAGNET. 5 



PROFESSOR OWEN'S NEW VIEWS. 



PROFESSOR OWEN has lately avowed his belief in 

 the doctrine that the so-called vital forces are really 

 ordinary physical forces. Unlike many advocates, however, 

 he admits that " on one or two points " proof is wanting. 

 But Owen goes much farther than the most advanced micro- 

 scopical observers and scientific investigators. He main- 

 tains that the formation of living beings out of inanimate 

 matter, by the conversion of physical and chemical into 

 vital modes of force, is going on daily and hourly ! The 

 evidence he has adduced in favour of this strange view, it 

 need scarcely be said, is scanty, uncertain, and uncon- 

 vincing ; while a mass of facts and arguments which have 

 been adduced in favour of the opposite conclusion, that 

 every particle of living matter comes from a pre-existing particle, 

 has been unconsciously neglected or purposely ignored. 



It is very significant that so great a master is unable to 

 suggest a better instance of the analogy which he affirms 

 exists between physical and vital actions than is afforded 

 by magnetism. He says that there is nothing peculiar to 

 living things in their power of selecting certain constituents, 

 because a magnet selects also. Let the reader consider 

 how different is the process called selection in these two 

 cases. A magnet, says Owen, attracts towards it only 

 certain kinds (a certain kind ?) of matter. Is there, then, 

 no difference between selection and attraction? Nor, he 

 further observes, is death characteristic of things living 



