6 



philosophical inquiry. Were their reason allowed to do so, it 

 would probably lead them towards a goal of a very different 

 nature. It is, indeed, strange that one of the chief means 

 relied upon for the purpose of convincing people of the truth 

 of materialism should be to institute comparisons between 

 things which are alive and have gradually grown from the in- 

 finitesimal, transparent, structureless into form and bulk, and 

 lifeless machines which have been made in pieces and after- 

 wards put together ; and to assure the public that these two 

 utterly distinct things, living beings and machines nay, 

 machines made by man, and not capable of being produced in 

 any other way were very much alike, and belonged to the 

 same category. It would be tedious were I to repeat the 

 dictatorial utterances in argumentative form which have been 

 published far and wide for the purpose of leading people to 

 believe that a living thing was like a watch, or a steam-engine, 

 or a hydraulic apparatus. Moreover, some of the comparisons 

 have been voluntarily abandoned by their authors in favour of 

 others even more absurd. Such tricks as calling a watch a 

 creature, and a man a machine, are hardly likely to mislead 

 even the most ignorant after they have withdrawn themselves 

 from the bewitching influence of the persuasive eloquence of 

 the materialist prophet, and have commenced to calmly think 

 over his extraordinary utterances, in order to extract any 

 meaning that may be hidden by the frothy metaphors of 

 modern physico-vital conjecture. 



The very last comparison made for the purpose of helping 

 people to understand the nature of a living thing, is, I think 

 you will say, the very worst and most inappropriate ever 

 suggested one that, as you will perceive, must be rejected, 

 not only because it is quite inapplicable, but because the 

 thing with which a living being is compared is so distorted 

 and so changed that it is no longer what it has been called 

 nay, in the terms adopted it is not even conceivable by the 

 imagination. This last thing which it has been said a living body 

 is like is called an army, but, as I shall show you, some essen- 

 tial characteristics of an army have been taken away, and some 

 impossible characteristics arbitrarily added, which would 

 reduce a hypothetical army to that which could no longer be 

 correctly termed an army; and as some of the characters super- 

 added are absolute impossibilities of nature, the whole com- 

 parison comes to little more than incongruous, unintelligible 

 metaphor, or incoherent rhapsody, which may amuse the 

 fanciful and thoughtless, but which ought to be condemned 

 by all capable of thinking, as extravagant and misleading, 

 and as likely to hasten the decadence of thought. 



