——— 
21 
here dealing with living molecules of such extreme minuteness 
as to defy all attempt at either measurement or analysis. We 
know nothing positive as to their origin: we are left to conjecture 
only, or to speculation if you like to call it so. And why should 
we not speculate? When did science ever make any advance 
towards the solution of its more recondite problems without 
speculation in the first instance? Take the following case. A 
phenomenon occurs to an observer of quite a novel character, 
such as he had never before witnessed. He naturally sets himself 
to consider what can have occasioned it? Difficulties are thought 
over until the mind suggests a possible way out of them. Facts 
are then sought for bearing on the subject in question, in order 
to confirm or negative his first speculation, which in the end is 
accepted or cast aside as the case may be. 
Of course on such an obscure question as that of the origin 
of life, there will be difference of opinion; but the more the 
question is thought over and discussed, the sooner are we likely 
to find the right answer to it. 
Some of cur most distinguished men of science at the present 
day believe in the closest connection between life and matter. 
Herbert Spencer believes that “life in all its forms has arisen by 
“an unbroken evolution through the instrumentality of natural 
“causes.”* Huxley, in his well-known article in the Fortnightly 
Review, on the ‘“ Physical basis of Life,”+ published many years 
back, considers “matter and life inseparably connected.” He 
regards the matter of life as “composed of ordinary matter, 
“differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are 
aggregated.” Tyndall enquires— Divorced from matter where 
“is lite to be found? Trace the line of life backwards, and see it 
“approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical 
“ condition.” t 
ee 
* See Principles of Biology, vol i., pp. 483-4. + No. xxvi. New Series. 
{ Belfast Address to the British Association, 1874. 
