34 THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LIVING MATTER. 



Secondly, let Matter be divided into the subtilest Parts imagin- 

 able, and these be moved as swiftly as you will, it is but a 

 senseless and stupid being still, and makes no nearer Approach 

 to Sense, Perception, or vital Energy than it had before. . . 

 And as for any external Laws or establish'd Rules of Motion, the 

 stupid Matter is not capable of observing or taking any Notice of 

 them, but it would be as sullen as the Mountain was that 

 Mahomet commanded to come down to him ; neither can those 

 Laws execute themselves. Therefore there must, besides Matter 

 and Law, be some Efficient, and that either a Quality or Power 

 inherent in the Matter itself, which is hard to conceive, or some 

 external intelligent Agent, either God himself immediately or 

 some Plastic Nature." 



It is my opinion that, judged even by the standard of his 

 own day, Ray was a better naturalist than philosopher. My 

 object in reading these extracts is to point out some errors that 

 may not yet be entirely dead. Firstly, we have the highly 

 figurative and wholly false conception of the " laws " of nature 

 as something which poor, stupid matter has to understand and 

 obey. Secondly, we have assertions regarding motion which 

 are purely verbal, and embody no real conception of what 

 actually occcurs. Here, of course, science has advanced greatly 

 since Ray's time, and we know motion to be both universal and 

 indestructible, and to exist in forms which were then unsuspected. 

 Thirdly, I would ask is there not something purely subjective 

 also in Ray's ideas of matter ? Have we any right to speak of 

 " stupid and senseless matter "? Are not these question-begging 

 epithets ? 



Whatever view we may take of the nature of protoplasm, 

 there is no doubt it is composed of the same elements as the rest 

 of the universe. As long as life continues there is a continual 

 procession of atoms of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and 

 other elements, variously combined, into the living substance, 

 and an equally unbroken procession of carbon, nitrogen, 

 hydrogen, and oxygen out of the living substance. It is not 

 only after death that the animal body is resolved into inorganic 

 combinations of these elements. We may compare a living 

 organism to the little columns of dust which are sometimes seen 

 spinning down the streets of our western townships. The 

 sleeping dust is for one instant aroused, whirled round in complex 



