PROFESSOR LOVERIXG'S ADDRESS. i 97 



consequently should be professed by no consistent believer in Evolution. 

 Those who do not assent to these doctrines would probably never be 

 able to believe in Archebiosis at all to the "vitalist" life is an im- 

 material principle specially created, and therefore our flask experiments 

 terminating in the birth of new organisms, if they carried with them 

 any convictions at all, would simply be regarded by him as proving 

 the occurrence of Heterogenesis. This is the view to which a vitalist 

 would be driven, if he had become convinced that no germs of Bac- 

 teria, or of such organisms as are found in our flasks, could have 

 survived the preliminary process of heating. Such a vague sort of 

 position is not open, however, to those who believe in the now gen- 

 erally-accepted physical doctrines of life. They are bound to rec- 

 ognize the undoubted distinction which exists between mere dead 

 organic matter and that organic matter which displays the phenomena 

 of life. They should no more think of calling a body "living" which 

 could not be made to display the characteristics of life, than they 

 would call a body " magnetic " when it would show none of the 

 properties pertaining to magnetism. If they had learned, therefore, 

 that living matter when exposed to heat of a certain intensity became 

 lifeless matter, the process by which new living protoplasm comes into 

 existence among this dead organic material would be, for them, as 

 much an instance of its new independent origin as if the process had 

 occurred in the midst of mere inorganic elements. The term Arche- 

 biosis is therefore applicable to the process that must take place in 

 our ordinary flask experiments where we have to do with dead organic 

 matter, just as it is also applicable to those more primordial combina- 

 tions which first gave birth to living protoplasm. The continued 

 occurrence of an independent elemental " origin " of living matter we 

 are called upon to believe in at the present day, though the actual 

 steps of the process by which it takes place are unfortunately as com- 

 pletely unknown to us as are the steps by which its " growth " occurs 

 whether from organic or from inorganic materials. Contemporary 

 Review. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 1 



By Pkof. JOSEPH LOVEEING. 



I. 



Instruments in Physical Progress. 



WHEN" the States-General of France were assembled for the last 

 time at Versailles, after a long interval of inactivity, and an 

 inaugural address was pronounced by the Bishop of Nancy, Mirabeau 



1 Retiring Address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 at the Hartford meeting, August 14, 18*74, by the ex-president. 



