20 



this metaphorical utterance is thought over, the more difficult 

 does it seem to be to get any definite meaning out of it. 

 What particular minute living thing or microcosm is in the 

 least degree like the world, or like the universe ? In what 

 respects, for instance, does a monad or an ameeba resemble the 

 world ? Surely it is time that people of intelligence should 

 really consider what is gained by vague utterances like the 

 above. We have had during the last fifteen or twenty years 

 no end of materialistic suggestions, prophecies, and pro- 

 mises, but little besides incoherence and inaccuracy have as 

 yet been established. One wonders what the representatives 

 of medical science of all nations thought when they were 

 assured that the microcosm repeats the macrocosm, and 

 what meaning was attributed to these words by those who 

 heard them. 



The word " like " has been very curiously employed by 

 many physical authorities, and, strange to say, in many 

 assertions to which I could point, " unlike " would be nearer 

 to the exact truth, as, for example, in the following dicta, 

 unlike ought to be substituted for like : Man is like a 

 machine ; man is like a monkey ; living matter is like white 

 of egg ; a living thing is like a watch, and a windmill, and a 

 hydraulic apparatus ; the body is like an army. Now, if any 

 one will point out the respects in which these things are alike, 

 T have no doubt some one will be found who will point out 

 in what respects they are unlike, and then the public will be 

 able to decide which of the two words : like or unlike is more 

 correct. 



" Vital phenomena," says Professor Huxley, " like (!) all 

 other phenomena of the physical (!) world, are resolvable 

 into matter and motion." Here, as in many other cases, 

 Professor Huxley begs the question. The assertion that 

 vital phenomena belong to the physical world is not to be 

 justified by demonstrated facts. No purely physical pheno- 

 mena are like any purely vital phenomena. How can vital 

 action be of the physical world when it appears and dis- 

 appears, while the matter with its physical properties still 

 remains ? Between the motion of the particles of living 

 matter and the motion of particles of non-living matter 

 there is all the difference imaginable an essential, an abso- 

 lute, af\ irreconcilable difference. Materialists, of course, 

 assume and assert the contrary ; but, instead of wasting time 

 by assertions, why do they not adduce an example of move- 

 ments occurring in some form of non-living matter exactly 

 resembling those which occur in living matter ? Much of our 

 scientific teaching is now intensely and ridiculously dicta- 



