vii.] ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. 123 



spontaneity. Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is 

 utterly impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be 

 the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that human 

 logic is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really spon 

 taneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the assump 

 tion, has no cause ; and the attempt to prove such a negative as 

 this is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus 

 a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given 

 phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is 

 acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its pro 

 gress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means, 

 the extension of the province of what we call matter and causa 

 tion, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions 

 of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity. 



I have endeavoured, in the first part of this discourse, to give 

 you a conception of the direction towards which modern 

 physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference 

 between the conception of life as the product of a certain dis 

 position of material molecules, and the old notion of an Archseus 

 governing and directing blind matter within each living body, 

 except this that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have 

 devoured spirit and spontaneity ? And as surely as every future 

 grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the 

 future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is 

 co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action. 



The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, 

 I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. They 

 watch what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in 

 such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when, during an 

 eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The 

 advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls ; the 

 tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom ; they are alarmed 

 lest man s moral nature be debased by the increase of his 

 wisdom. 



If the &quot; New Philosophy &quot; be worthy of the reprobation with 

 which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well 



