38 JOURNAL OF THE [April, 



sponge absorbs water and sucks it into every cavity. Life, in 

 short, was regarded as centripetal, not centrifugal ; and there 

 was thought to be Scripture warrant for this view, in the record 

 of the fact that the Creator, after fashioning the human form 

 from purely inert material, at last breathed into it the breath of 

 life and raised it up a sentient being. 



But the tendency of the cell-doctrine was to disintegrate the 

 vital principle, — to drive it into minute and independent centres, 

 — to destroy the long-accepted idea of individuality. In place 

 of one body containing one living spirit, a new conception was 

 introduced, as we have seen, of an infinitely multiple body com- 

 posed of absolute, though very minute, units, each possessing in 

 itself all the essentials to vitality, — each inhabited" by its own 

 little vital spirit. 



Now, when Beale announced his discovery of the seat of all 

 vital action in a mere life-manifesting substance, without cell-wall 

 or nucleus, and even, as he imagined, without structure, which 

 substance was contained within every living tissue throughout 

 the organism, he was supposed to have aimed a fatal blow at the 

 materialistic conception of life. But we have observed how 

 Professor Huxley, starting with Beale's ideal living matter, 

 turned- the argument again into the materialistic channel and 

 undertook to prove, from Beale's premises, a conclusion in favor 

 of mere chemistry and physics as against Beale's provisional 

 " vital power." We have seen, too, how he shaped his argument 

 to the thesis " all flesh is grass," or, as perhaps he would prefer 

 to say, all flesh is clay, and the whole world is one "great labor- 

 atory, and its sole shaping and directing powers are the physical 

 and chemical forces ; — men are not different from other animals 

 except in position ; all are but machines and their actions are 

 automatic, originating in the functions not of separate cells, to 

 be sure, but of separate masses, manifesting, in different ways, 

 after all, only modes of one motion, namely, contractility. 



Then came the men who dissected and analyzed Huxley's 

 physical basis of life and showed that its bulk and substance is 

 in truth as lifeless as the water in the sponge ; who replaced his 

 life in masses or lumps by what Doctor Sterling had already 

 unwittingly designated as "life in the web." And so we have 

 arrived at a point in our historical survey at which life is sup- 

 posed literally to hang upon a slender thread, intact throughout, 



