346 THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN. 



chemical and physical. In him we find not merely 

 that brain and nerve force which is common to him 

 and lower animals, and which exhibits one of the most 

 marvellous energies in nature, but we have the higher 

 force of will and intellect, enabling him to read the 

 secrets of nature, to seize and combine and utilize its 

 laws like a god, and like a god to attain to the higher 

 discernment of good and evil. Nay, more, this power 

 which resides within man rules with omnipotent 

 energy the material organism, driving its nerve forces 

 until cells and fibres are worn out and destroyed, 

 taxing muscles and tendons till they break, impelHng 

 its slave the body even to that which will bring injury 

 and death itself. Surely, what we thus see in man 

 must be the image and likeness of the Great Spirit. 

 We can escape from this conclusion only by one or 

 other of two assumptions, either of which is rather to 

 be called a play upon words than a scientific theory. 

 We may, with a certain class of physicists and physio- 

 logists, confine our attention wholly to the fire and the 

 steam, and overlook the engineer. We may assume 

 that with protoplasm and animal electricity, for 

 example, we can dispense with life, and not only with 

 Ufe but with spirit also. Yet he who regards vitality 

 as an unmeaning word, and yet speaks of " living 

 protoplasm," and " dead protoplasm," and affirms that 

 between these two states, so different in their pheno- 

 mena, no chemical or physical difference exists, is 

 surely either laughing at us, or committing himself to 

 what the Duke of Argyll calls a philosophical bull; and 



