4/4 ON THE ORIGIN OF FORCE. 



which regulate the movements of inanimate matter, or, 

 in other words, giving rise to movements which would not 

 result from the action of those laws uninterfered with ; 

 and therefore implying, on the very same principle, the 

 origination of force. The first and greatest question 

 which Philosophy has to resolve in its attempts to make 

 out a Kosmos, to bring the whole of the phsenomena 

 exhibited in these three domains of existence under the 

 contemplation of the mind as a- congruous whole, is, 



ment of a rudimentary joint followed in slow succession after centuries 

 of hereditary improvement, by the others, up to the perfect member. 

 It starts at once into completeness. The change in the working-plan 

 of the whole hand has been carried out at once, by a systematic 

 engraftment of blood-vessels and nerves into effective connexions 

 with the centres of nutritive, mechanical, and sensitive action in the 

 frame, as if by some preconceived arrangement. [Since this was 

 written I have been informed of two or three instances of super- 

 fluous thumbs. They were imperfectly formed, not movable, and 

 so far might be considered rudimentary.] 



In direct reference to this point I would call the reader's atten- 

 tion to a very striking passage in the Croonian Lecture for 1865, 

 delivered before the Royal Society by Prof. Beale, where, after 

 stating that " phenomena occur in the simplest form of living 

 matter, which never have been, and which," he believes, "never 

 can be explained upon any known physical or chemical laws" he 

 goes on to say, 



" Living matter is not a machine, nor does it act upon the prin- 

 ciples of a machine, nor is force conditioned in it as it is in a machine, 

 nor have the movements occurring in it been explained by physics, 

 or the changes which take place in its composition by chemistry. 

 The phcenomena occurring in living matter are peculiar, differing 

 from any other known phcenomena ; and therefore, until we can ex- 

 plain them, they may well be distinguished by the term vital. Not 

 the slightest step has yet been made towards the production of 

 matter possessing the properties which distinguish living matter from 

 matter in every other known state." Proceedings of the Royal 

 Society, xiv. p. 282, No. 72. 



