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be proved, as declared in many scientific dictatorial utterances, 

 that the difference is molecular, mechanical, or chemical in 

 its nature, then must things living be included in the same 

 category as non-living matter. The living and non-living in 

 that case will truly be one; then would be established the 

 much longed-for Unity; then would materialism rest on an 

 intelligible basis, and constitute the foundation of a popular 

 if not a progressive creed. 



But the science of our day has given no answer of the kind. 

 On the contrary, all investigations so far carried out lead to in- 

 ferences of an opposite tendency. So far from the gradations 

 asserted to exist having been proved, not a vestige of anything 

 tending towards proof has been discovered. No difference in 

 kind so consummate, no divergence in property so wide or so 

 absolute, can be pointed out in nature, as the difference which 

 subsists between a minute particle of matter in the living and 

 the same in the dead state. The difference remains to this 

 day as irreconcileable, inestimable, absolute, in every sense 

 as it ever was; while there is no reason to suppose the 

 difference will be less in time to come. 



Now, let me ask you to consider for a moment the move- 

 ments which affect every form of living matter while it is alive, 

 which cease with its death never to recur, and which are 

 absolutely different from any movements of non-living matter 

 which are known. In many instances so active are these 

 movements that they can be seen and studied under the 

 microscope by any one who chooses to take a little trouble. 

 Although the observer may not be a trained microscopist, he 

 will see enough to satisfy him that the movements are not like 

 those of any ordinary matter. It is true that movement occurs 

 in all kinds of matter non-living as well as living, but the 

 movements of the molecules of non-living matter are one 

 thing, those of living matter another thing altogether. The 

 former belong to matter as matter, and occur in the particles 

 whether alive or dead. The latter continue only as long as 

 life lasts. It has been authoritatively declared that living 

 movements differ from non-living movements in degree only, 

 and not in kind. But any one who studies the movements of 

 living matter soon becomes convinced that they are different 

 in kind from any non-living movements, inasmuch as they 

 begin and cease under circumstances which would not affect 

 the movements of non-living matter, while the very matter 

 which exhibits the living movements will exhibit non-living 

 movements after it has ceased to live. The materialistic doc- 

 trine of life, instead of resting upon facts of observation and 

 experiment, rests upon assumptions of the most extravagant 



