MATTER LIVING AND NOT-LIVING. 729 



ical to extend a merely empirical law beyond the limits in which it 

 has been found true by observation. It was once believed, for in- 

 stance, that all swans are white, and, what is more, the belief was sus- 

 tained by the uniform experience of mankind for thirty centuries ; 

 but it turned out to be erroneous, all the same. That the black swan 

 of archebiosis has not been seen is no proof that it may not -be seen, 

 if we push on to its presumptive haunt by the shaded springs of life ; 

 and, in the interval, we can be sure only of what we have positively 

 seen. But of this there of course can be no doubt. The famous 

 maxim, All life proceeds from life, is indeed necessarily true of all the 

 more specialized forms of life, because the proceeding of any one of 

 these directly from inorganic matter would necessitate a leap over the 

 intermediate forms ; and Nature, as in our day is realized more vividly 

 than before, does nothing by leaps. The maxim, though reached in- 

 ductively, may be explained deductively ; it is itself, thus limited, a 

 corollary from the general law of evolution. But, with forms of life 

 having little or no specialization, and only a few removes or one re- 

 move from inorganic matter, the case is plainly different. Respecting 

 these, induction, so far as it has yet gone, and deduction, so far as it 

 can now be applied, agree in pointing unmistakably to their origin in 

 the unorganized matter from which they are scarcely distinguishable, 

 and from which they differ in every respect vastly less than from the 

 more specialized forms arising out of them, and immeasurably less 

 than the human adult differs from the human embryo. Of these low- 

 est forms, exhibiting life almost or quite without organization, the 

 maxim not only is not necessarily true, but is necessarily untrue. It 

 applies, as it must ever apply, to living things in general, but not to 

 those living things which exemplify the bottom characteristics of the 

 group. Omne vivum ex vivo was not written of the type. If it 

 were, ex nihilo nihil fit could not be written too. 



" According to the material contention," avers Dr. Beale, " every- 

 thing owes its existence to the properties of the material particles out 

 of which it is constructed." Whereupon he rather scornfully asks, 

 " Who would think of asserting that in the properties of brass and 

 iron or steel we shall find the explanation of the construction of a 

 watch ? " Nobody ; with this interrogatory Dr. Beale knocks over a 

 man of straw set up with his own hands. What he calls " the mate- 

 rial contention " is really that every phenomenon owes its existence to 

 the properties of matter ; but this contention his crucial instance does 

 not meet, for denying that a watch owes its existence to " the proper- 

 ties of brass and iron or steel " is not denying that it owes its exist- 

 ence to material properties, acting under special conditions, in special 

 combinations, according to special laws, and emerging into a special 

 organism, with the capability of watch-making : he answers what is 

 asserted by denying what is not asserted. The fallacy, however, may 

 suggest the clew to a better comprehension of the reality. Why do 



