334 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



the case of the shapeless or amorphous anorgana, such as 

 non-crystallized stones, deposits, etc. We are consequently 

 unable to find any essential difference in the external 

 forms or the inner structure of anoro-ana and orojanisms. 



Thirdly, let us turn to the forces or the pJienoonena of 

 viotion of these two different groups of bodies (Gen. Morph. 

 i. 140). Here we meet with the greatest difficulties. The 

 vital phenomena, known as a rule only in the highly 

 developed organisms, in the more perfect animals and plants, 

 seem there so mysterious, so wonderful, so peculiar, that 

 most persons are decidedly of opinion that in inorganic 

 nature there occurs nothing at all similar, or in the least 

 degree comparable to them. Organisms are for this very 

 reason called animate, and the anorgana, inanimate natural 

 bodies. Hence, even so late as the commencement of the 

 present century, the science which investigates the 

 phenomena of life, namely physiology, retained the 

 erroneous idea that the physical and chemical properties 

 of matter were not sufficient for explaining these 

 phenomena. In our own day, especially during the last 

 ten years, this idea may be regarded as having been com- 

 pletely refuted. In physiology, at least, it has now no 

 place. It now never occurs to a physiologist to consider 

 any of the vital phenomena as the result of a mysterious 

 vital force, of an active power working for a definite purpose, 

 standing outside of matter, and, so to speak, taking only 

 the physico-chemical forces into its service. Modern 

 physiology has arrived at the strictly monistic conviction 

 that all of the vital phenomena, and, above all, the two 

 fundamental phenomena of nutrition and propagation are 

 purely physico-chemical processes, and directly dependent 



