1872.] Notices of Books. 93 
Civil Engineering College, furnishes much information on the 
analysis of gases. The work is too well-known as a technical 
handbook to need any recommendation. Mr. Sutton must, 
however, be thanked for keeping pace with the progress of science. 
Life Theories: their Influence upon Religious Thought. By 
LIoNnEL S. Beare, M.B., F.R:S:, F.R.C.P., &c. London: 
J. and A. Churchill. 1871. 
Tue physical theory of life, despite its many advocates and its 
present vigorous propagation, seems destined to decline at no 
distant period. It has to meet an almost insuperable difficulty 
at its outset; for it appeals directly against all the religious 
prejudices of mankind, while it holds in view no sufficient 
recompense—except to those enthusiasts and zealots whose 
recompense is to be known as its propagators. Moreover, its 
fundamental proposition is founded on assertion, for although 
influential philosophers have stated that the non-living passes by 
insensible gradations into the living, no matter in the state of 
transition has ever been brought to light. This is the point 
taken up, and ably so, by Dr. Beale in his examination of the 
present theories of life. He shows how the present hypotheses 
of spontaneous generation are supported by only the vaguest 
conjectures, pointing out the true opposition of the living and 
non-living, of formative agency and formed matter, and that 
formative agency is not mere force, but force conquered and 
regulated. Who would say that force was competent to con- 
struct a wheel or build a mill ? and yet there are men who hold 
that the sun’s force constructs a worm or a plant. Vitality is 
not the slave of force, but has ever proved its master. Then, 
says Dr. Beale:— 
“If the phenomena of living beings cannot be fully accounted 
for by physics and chemistry, it is a question still open for 
discussion whether or not life is due to the working of some 
agency or power distinct from matter, and the idea of a much 
higher power capable of influencing all matter may not only be 
entertained without inconsistency, but an additional argument is 
gained in its support.” 
** Of Power and Force.—I beg the reader to consider the vast 
difference between power, force, and property, for these are 
quite distinct from one another. Power is capable of activity; 
it may design, arrange, form, construct, build. Property is 
passive, and belongs to the material particles, and is no more 
capable of destruction than the particles themselves. Force 
differs from property in that its form or mode may be changed 
or conditioned and assume other forms, and be afterwards restored 
to the original one. Power may cease and vanish, but property 
is retained, and force in one form or other is persistent.” 
