208 Transactions of the Society. 



The Nature of the Changes in Living Matter. 



For consideration in my address this evening I have ventured 

 to choose a subject which I hope will not prove altogether without 

 interest. It seemed to me that every one who can use the Microscope 

 and study the countless living forms frequently presented to his 

 view, as, for example, in a few drops of water, must often long 

 to know more concerning the nature of the forces or powers which 

 determine their origin, their growth, multiplication, and actions 

 than has been thus far conclusively determined. The question has 

 been considered again and again, but the conclusions with regard 

 to important principles are at variance and often incompatible or 

 contradictory, and certainly need more full consideration and free 

 discussion than they have yet received. As the general views 

 in question affect almost every department of human thought, 

 and must continue to exercise an important influence upon considera- 

 tions connected with religious and even political opinion, as well as 

 our views concerning the principles upon which the training and 

 education of the young should be based, no apology is needed for 

 bringing them under your notice. 



Observers in these days, in a discussion like the present, have 

 some advantage over their predecessors, inasmuch as the actual 

 matter of any given living organism which was in a living state at 

 the time of the examination can with certainty be distinguished from 

 that which was not actually hving. Few, I imagine, who have 

 considered the facts would now venture to afSrm that all the 

 matter of any living organism was at any one time really in a living 

 state. The body of every living man or animal at all periods of 

 time consists only in part of matter that is living, the greater 

 proportion of the matter of the body being in a non-living state. 

 But by calling much of the tissue "living" which does not manifest 

 any characteristics of life, and really contrasts in every important 

 particular with that which lives, those who support the materialistic 

 argument manage to lead a few persons imbued with a large share 

 of faith to believe that they have reason on their side. 



The general purport of my remarks will be to show, contrary 

 to the teachings which are now most popular, that the living state 

 and the non-living state belong to difierent categories, and that 

 these two states are distinct and irreconcilable. Between the 

 living matter of a living body and its non-living matter there is a 

 sharp contrast, and the changes going on in the one are in their 

 ■ essential nature altogether distinct from those occurring in the other. 

 In those situations where the living seems to shade into the non- 

 living, the gradation is apparent, not real, and the continuity 

 between them is only apparent. The seeming gradational passage 

 of one into the other is due to the varying proportion of the living 



