latter. Processes of aggregation may go on to all eternity 

 without the occurrence of any change resembling, or allied to, 

 that of growth. Groivth after all is but one of several purely 

 vital phenomena. 



Surely it is the duty of all persons having any pretensions to 

 culture, who esteem accuracy and truth, and desire to promote 

 their diffusion, either to condemn the materialistic doctrine as 

 scientifically untenable, or to insist that more accurate and 

 adequate explanation of the facts and principles upon which 

 it is based should be given by those who have unreservedly 

 committed themselves to the universal application of this 

 physical hypothesis of life, and that some reply should be 

 made to the objections that have been raised to its general 

 application to living things. 



I would draw attention to the declaration again and again 

 repeated, and now taught even to children, that the living and 

 the non-living differ only in degree, that tJte living has been 

 evolced by degrees from the non-living, and that the latter 

 passes by gradations towards the former state. No one has 

 adduced any evidence in proof of these conclusions which are, 

 in fact, dictatorial assertions only, and no specimen of any 

 kind of matter which is actually passing from the non-living 

 to the living state, or which, can be shown to establish any 

 connexion between these absolutely different conditions of 

 matter has been, or can be at this time, brought forward. 



You will, I think, find that, in endeavouring to prove the 

 reasonableness and strength of the doctrines they have espoused, 

 the advocates of every form of materialism mainly rely upon 

 the assumed applicability to matter that lives, of conclusions 

 arrived at concerning the nature of the phenomena of non- 

 living matter. But the fact, That this living matter, as is well 

 known, is invariably derived from matter that already lived, is 

 a serious difficulty which presents itself to the mind at the 

 outset of the inquiry, and which, instead of receiving some 

 explanation as regards its bearing upon physical views of life, 

 is on account of its inconvenient tendency generally ignored. 

 Materialism, indeed, rests upon this assumed intimate alliance 

 and relationship between the living and non-living. But as 

 soon as the knowledge of the peculiar and special nature of 

 all vital actions shall be better known and more widely spread, 

 and when people shall have learnt how absolutely the vital are 

 marked off from purely physical and chemical actions, belief 

 in fhaterialism will be shaken, and this antiquated creed will 

 then only retain the support of a few faithful adherents 

 wedded to the old paths and ancient ways who have not heart 

 to desert the old beliefs, evolved in the infancy of thought and 



