286 BRITISH ASSOCIATION, MEETING AT EXETER. 
composition, differed from the former merely by the removal of one 
equivalent of water. But the physiological action of the new base was 
utterly different from that of the original one. While morphia is a 
powerful narcotic, the use of which is apt to be followed by subsequent 
depression, the new base was found to be free from narcotic properties, 
but to be a powerful emetic, the action of which was unattended by 
injurious after-effects. It seems likely to become avaluable remedial 
agent. 
A ** Mysterious Something.” 
But do the laws of chemical affinity, to which, as I have endeavoured 
to infer, living beings, whether vegetable or animal, are in absolute 
subjection, together with those of capillary attraction, of diffusion, and 
so forth, account for the formation of an organic structure, as distin- 
guished from the elaboration of the chemical substances of which it is 
composed? No more, it seems to me, than the laws of motion account 
for the union of oxygen and hydrogen to form water, though the pon- 
derable matter so uniting is subject to the laws of motion during the 
act of union just as well as before and after. In the various processes 
of crystallization, of precipitation, and so forth, which we witness in 
dead matter, I cannot see the faintest shadow of an approach to the 
formation of an organic structure, still less to the wonderful series of 
changes which are concerned in the growth and perpetuation of even 
the lowliest plant. Admitting to the full as highly probable, though 
not completely demonstrated, the applicability to living beings of the 
laws which have been ascertained with reference to dead matter, I feel 
constrained, at the same time, to admit the existence of a mysterious 
something lying beyond—a something sui generis, which I regard, not 
as balancing and suspending the ordinary physical laws, but as working 
with them and through them to the attainment of a designed end. 
What this something which we call life may be is a profound 
mystery. We know not how many links in the chain of secondary 
causation may yet remain behind; we know not how few. It would 
be presumptuous indeed to assume that in any case we had already 
reached the last link, and to charge with irreverence a fellow-worker 
who attempted to push his investigations yet one step further back. 
On the other hand, if a thick darkness enshrouds all beyond, we have 
no right to assume it to be impossible that we should have reached 
