72 Appendix. 



its portion. It is diffused through the whole solids and fluids, 

 making a necessary part of them," 



In Dr. Front's Bridgwater Treatise (p 493), he says : " The 

 stomach must have the power of organizing and vitalizing the 

 different alimentary substances. It is impossible to imagine that 

 the agency of the stomach can be chemical. This agency is 

 vital, and its nature is unknown." 



Dr. Pritchard says : " This vital principle assumes the charac- 

 ter of a plastic or formative power. It presides over and sets in 

 action the different processes by wh^ch growth and organization 

 are effected ; and gives form and modification to the component 

 parts of the animal and vegetable body, and contributes, by a 

 preserving influence to the maintenance of its existence, for a def- 

 inite portion of time." 



The vital element acts antagonistically to the forces of grav- 

 ity — it must therefore be imponderable. The vital force carries 

 the sap of trees and plants, and the blood of animals, upwards — 

 contrary to the forces of gravity inherent in the ponderable ele- 

 ments of matter; and hence living organisms must have, in their 

 composition, some imponderable element, unknown to the 

 chemist. 



Prof Nicholson, of the University of Toronto, says, in his 

 Biology, " It appears in the highest degree probable, that every 

 vital action has in it something which is not merely physical and 

 chemical, but which is conditioned by an unknown force — 

 higher in its nature and distinct in kind, as compared with all 

 other forces. The presence of this vital force may be recog- 

 nized even in the simplest phenomena of nutrition ; and no at- 

 tempt has hitherto been made to explain \\\t phenomena of repro- 

 duction, by the working of any known physical or chemical 

 force. ' ' 



Dr. Beale of London says, " Facts and observations on 

 things living, support the idea of vitality, and are not favorable 

 to any mechanical or chemical hypothesis of life yet proposed." 



The material organism of animals is composed of elements 

 of matter known to the chemist ; but the vitalists hold that in 



