122 



course of heterogenetic experiments was exactly like the living forms which 

 were known and admitted to have been produced from parental organisms. He 

 disliked to discuss this subject because he felt he could not do so freely without 

 offering severe criticisms and wounding the tender feelings of the faithful 

 believers in the heterogenetic idea. He would have to remark that drawings 

 were not correctly made, and did not truly represent what it was assumed had 

 sprung from non-living matter. He would have to comment severely upon the 

 kind of evidence that had been accepted as conclusive, and had been stated to be 

 thoroughly trustworthy. He would be obliged to bring forward evidence to 

 show that bodies figured were not what they were described ; and it was obvious 

 this could not be done without offending those who put their trust in spontaneous 

 generation and subscribed to articles of belief concerning which he (Dr. Beale) 

 was a miserable sceptic, unconverted and unbelieving, not only destitute of 

 faith, but wanting in the ability to acquire the least spark of faith. He even 

 went so far as to think that the whole question might be upset merely on the 

 ground of extreme improbability, for to him the development of the living 

 direct from the non-living appeared one of the most improbable things that 

 could be conceived. They all knew that millions of known forms all came from 

 previously existing forms, but they were called upon to believe that a very few 

 living things originated in a totally different manner, and in obedience to laws 

 totally distinct in their nature from those which governed the rest of creation. 

 And this, notwithstanding the fact that the gulf between the living and the 

 non-living became wider and deeper the further minute investigation was 

 pushed. Of course, people would say that he (Dr. Beale) was a prejudiced 

 " vitalist," but he would wish it to be borne in mind that he had worked at the 

 subject for many years before he ventured to use the term vital at all, and he 

 was quite prepared now to give it up as soon as anyone gave him a better one 

 to distinguish the actions peculiar to matter that was alive. He did not contend 

 for any particular word ; they might call the matter A, B, or C matter, if they 

 pleased ; and the properties a, jS, or y properties or anything else. If the move- 

 ments of an Amoeba could be shown to be of the same kind and due to the same 

 causes as the movements of molecules or lifeless particles suspended in a fluid, 

 he would admit them to be molecular movements, and admit that they might be 

 due to the operation of inorganic forces. But, as far as he was able to observe, 

 he felt quite certain that if such movements were molecular movements, they 

 were certainly molecular movements of a wry different kind from the "mole- 

 cular" movements of lifeless particles suspended in a drop of water. The 

 molecular motion of particles in fluid could easily be stopped by the addition of 

 a little syrup, and they would recur when the fluid was diluted, but when the 

 movements of living matter were once stopped they were never found to recur 

 in the same particular particles of matter. 



Mr. Lowne hoped that Dr. Beale did not give him credit for confusing these 

 two kinds of movements, or that he supposed he would compare the movements 

 of molecules of hydrogen gas to the movements of a little soot in water. He 

 supposed it would be admitted that hydrogen consisted of molecules ? 



Dr. Beale said it was quite possible to stop the movements of the molecules 

 of hydrogen and of soot, to change their character altogether, and afterwards to 

 make them proceed as before, but they could not stop the movements of the 

 living matter of an Amoeba and afterwards make them go on again. 



Mr. Lowne thought that the molecular motion in hydrogen stops when that 

 gas undergoes combination, and ceases to exist as hydrogen, only the same as 



