xviii OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



latter address was entitled " Some Modern Aspects of the Life 

 Question." He identifies vital force or energy as that stored in the 

 complex protoplasm under physical and chemical conditions only; 

 a view which more and more guides the biochemists of today in 

 their researches. The Association address is an excellent example 

 of clear logical scientific thinking. In it Dr. Barker drew ably from 

 his rich fund of knowledge in physics, chemistry, biology, and kin- 

 dred branches. He claims for science its true position as interpreter 

 of the things which can be known, but points out clearly the limita- 

 tions of this knowledge. 



The writer may be pardoned making a few quotations : 



But the properties of bodies are only the characters by which we differ- 

 entiate them. Two bodies having the same properties would only be two 

 portions of the same substance. Because life, therefore, is unlike other proper- 

 ties of matter, it by no means follows that it is not a property of matter. 

 No dictum is more absolute in science than the one which predicates prop- 

 erties upon constitution. To say that this property exhibited by protoplasm, 

 marvellous and even unique though it be, is not a natural result of the con- 

 stitution of matter itself, but is due to an unknown entity, a tcrtium quid 

 which inhabits and controls it, is opposed to all scientific analogy and ex- 

 perience. To the statement of the vitalist that there is no evidence that life 

 is a property of matter, we may reply with emphasis that there is not the 

 slightest proof that it is not. 



Again, at the close of the address, speaking of the dependence of all 

 activity on the earth upon solar radiation : 



It is a beautiful conception of science which regards the energy which is 

 manifested on the earth as having its origin in the sun. Pulsating awhile in 

 the ether, the molecules of which fill the intervening space, this motion 

 reaches our earth and communicates its i tremor to the molecules of matter. 

 Instantly all starts into life. The winds move, the waters rise and fall, the 

 lightnings flash and the thunders roll, all as subdivisions of this received 

 power. 



And further: 



But all this energy is only a transitory possession. As the sunlight gilds 

 the mountain top and then glances off into space, so this energy touches upon 

 and beautifies our earth and then speeds on its way. What other worlds it 

 reaches and vivifies, we may never know. Beyond the veil of the seen, 

 science may not penetrate. But religion, more hopeful, seeks there for the 

 new heavens and the new* earth wherein shall be solved the problems of a 

 higher life. 



