The President's Address. By L. S. Beale, F.B.S. 223 



way, mental action (psychical), influences the particles of mind 

 living matter, and bears the same sort of relation to these particles 

 as the vital power (psychical) of any form of living matter bears to 

 the matter of which it is composed. 



There is, then (psychically), some intimate bond between all 

 life, but absolute separation between all hving and non-hving. 

 However great the difference between the lowest and highest life, 

 this difference is as nothing to that psychical difference which 

 separates the lowest simplest living from any kind of non-living 

 matter. To regard consciousness as something ^^er se is gratuitous. 

 Of course, if the " irritability " which distinguishes living matter 

 from non-living matter is a physical property, this doctrine might be 

 tenable ; but I have shown that it is as unreasonable to regard this 

 so-called irritability as a physical phenomenon, as it is to consider 

 thought itself to be a mere property of matter. 



In conclusion, I ask you to consider whether it is not more 

 reasonable to place all life in one category, and all non-hving in 

 another, than to seek to include nearly all life in the physical class, 

 and man only, or man and the higher animals, in a separate 

 psychical category. To include man and all life among the physical 

 and material, to say that man is a machine and all his actions 

 mechanical, is sim})ly one of many preposterous assertions in the 

 same direction, which are untrue. Depend upon it we must attack, 

 sooner or later, the problem how life directly influences material 

 particles, for we shall have to accept the proposition that material 

 particles as soon as they " live " are governed and arranged and 

 moved in a manner in which no physical forces whatever are able 

 to govern, arrange, and move them. 



I venture to throw the most important conclusions into the 

 form of propositions. 



The phenomena of living matter are not due to the properties 

 of the matter. Vital actions are of an order absolutely distinct 

 from any known physical actions. 



Life force, or power, has not been, and cannot be, evolved in any 

 way from matter only, nor is it a consequence of changes occurring 

 in matter, but, on the contrary, life influences and determines 

 changes in the matter, which changes are quite jjcculiar. 



The vital phenomena of the lowest simplest forms of living 

 matter are of the same general nature as those of the highest, and 

 are as far removed as are the latter from any kind of physical 

 change. 



The assertion that any low forms of life are near to, or establish 

 any transition towards, the inorganic, is not justified by any facts 

 known to science. 



The attempts made to make the public believe that the so-called 



