XIV BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE 3 71 



vestigation of the vital processes of growth, me- 

 tabolism, and contractility. They stand upon the 

 ancient ways; only, in accordance with that prog- 

 ress towards democracy, which a great political 

 writer has declared to be the fatal characteristic 

 of modern times, they substitute a republic formed 

 by a few billion of " animulse " for the monarchy 

 of the all-pervading " anima." 



Others, on the contrary, supported by a robust 

 faith in the universal applicability of the principles 

 laid down by Descartes, and seeing that the actions 

 called " vital " are, so far as we have any means of 

 knowing, nothing but changes of place of particles 

 of matter, look to molecular physics to achieve 

 the analysis of the living protoplasm itself into a 

 molecular mechanism. If there is any truth in 

 the received doctrines of physics, that contrast 

 between living and inert matter, on which Bichat 

 lays so much stress, does not exist. In nature, 

 nothing is at rest, nothing is amorphous; the 

 simplest particle of that which men in their 

 blindness are pleased to call " brute matter " is a 

 vast aggregate of molecular mechanisms perform- 

 ing complicated movements of immense rapidity, 

 and sensitively adjusting themselves to every 

 change in the surrounding world. Living matter 

 differs from other matter in degree and not in kind; 

 the microcosm repeats the macrocosm; and one 

 chain of causation connects the nebulous original 

 of suns and planetary systems with the protoplas- 

 mic foundation of life and organisation. 



