J3I0GKAPHICAL SKETCH OF HENRY ?,11LNE-EI)WAKI)S. 723 



of iiiiitter, whether inert or active, seems to him iusiitticieut to give such 

 a result, and that the intervention of a su[)erior power to him appears 

 necessary. To sum up all, he remains loyal to the old conceptiou 

 which regards life as -an organizing force of ponderable matter," and 

 the organization of the living being not the cause of the vital power it 

 posseses, but, ou the contrary, a consequence of the properties of that 

 force. 



Milne-Edwards did not take up these new views of our time. To use 

 a comparison often made since the days of the ancient poets, the evolu- 

 lutiou of life was likened to a permanent tlame, according to the theory 

 of a purely kinematic creation by a system of co-ordinated impulses, 

 ceutralized in some one direction by merely mechanical conditions, 

 and sustained by a consummation of energy independent even of that 

 direction. To this conce[)tion, founded on facts borrowed exclusively 

 from the physical and material world and tending to regard the individ- 

 uality of every human being as an illusion and man himself the simple 

 result of his organic construction, philosophers given to the study of the 

 moral world oppose another and an apparently contradictory concep- 

 tion, which, founded ou the existence of conscience, regards the psycho- 

 logical individual as primordial and the exterior world as determined 

 by his own thoughts, having no intelligible existence outside of his 

 mind. Between these contradictory views and methods I can not 

 decide here; this is not the place to insist upon the solution of prob- 

 lems that must long, if not forever, remain veiled to the weakness of 

 the human understanding. Let us however guard against declining 

 to. investigate or refusing even to voice such questions, either from the 

 side of mysticism, which would deny the fundamental object of all 

 science, or from the side of the professed skepticism, which to-day 

 threatens to overtake so many wearied minds. 



Whatever may be said and thought in regard to this subject, it was 

 not these tremendous (piestions that our learned brother i)referred to 

 spend his time in considering, it was not upon these tliat he left his 

 mark. Such was not the design of a work that was based u^jon the 

 research of other men. A book of reference, with whatever ability it 

 may be compiled, requires acertain sentiment of sacrifice and self-abnega- 

 tion on the part of its author; if he renders the greatest services to 

 the present generation in tlie necessary course of years he seldom 

 escapes finding Ids work incomplete and old fashioned. During the 

 long series of years dedicated to its publication science undergoes 

 various changes, that become still more accentuated as earlier impres- 

 sions give way to others in the lapse of time. This is inevitable by 

 reason of the ever-increasing nnmber of workers, the diversity of lan- 

 guages and nations, each looking at science from the point of view most 

 nearly conformed to its own geidus and traditions, liesides, this indi- 

 viduality is more aggressive than it was formerly. A man after becom- 

 ing learned and familiar with methods would often rather acknowledge 



