7872.] Notices of Books. 95 
stated, have acknowledged that the facts rendered imperative 
the admission of an agency belonging to an order very different 
from that in which physical and chemical actions are com- 
prised.” 
Not to speak of what is desirable as truth, there arises the 
ennobling contemplation of a spiritual agency—of an_ all- 
knowing, all-directing, and everywhere-present Creator. While 
the physical theory of life cramps the mind and unsettles the 
faith of the thinking man— 
‘The doctrine of vitality points in an opposite direction. 
The mind which contemplates vital power will naturally be led 
to ponder upon the spiritual. The aspirations of the mind will 
progressively advance, while the intellect increases in strength, 
encouraged by the hope that it may succeed in forming some 
conception of the manner in which ever-present, ever-active 
power designs, guides, and causes to be carried out the never- 
ceasing changes in living matter.” 
Why cannot life be re-called ? Because ‘ life would never re- 
appear unless some power able to overcome ordinary tendencies 
and capable of setting at nought natural laws intervened.” 
Anyone reading Dr. Beale’s convincing arguments must con- 
clude with him that— 
‘Vitality is as distinct from matter and material properties as 
is ever-active mind from the inanimate passive substance which 
it fashions, and upon which it may impress its own fleeting, and 
perhaps but momentary, conceptions.” 
And that— 
‘‘ A theory of vitality (non-material, psychical) will alone enable 
anyone to account for the facts demonstrated in connection with 
the life of all living things. Although an immaterial agency 
cannot be demonstrated to the senses, the evidences of the 
working of such a power are so distinct and clear to the reason 
that the mind which remains unfettered by the trammels of 
dogmatic physics, and is free to exercise judgment, will not 
deny its existence.” 
We have before us in these quotations the opinion of a man not 
only eminent as an author, but well-known to be a shrewd and 
careful investigator, who has given years to the examination of the 
functions of the human frame. The account of the researches as to 
the construction of living tissue is most interesting. Dr. Beale 
shows that there are two states of matter in living beings; one 
manifesting truly vital phenomena, nutrition, growth, and 
multiplication, while the other is the seat of physical and 
chemical changes only. It appears that of any living being, but 
a part of the matter of which it is constituted is really living at 
any moment, and that in the case of adult forms of the higher 
animals and man, indeed only avery small portion of the total 
