3 



But few of those, who are carried along by the materialistic 

 stream, have troubled to think over the remarkable tenets to 

 which they have given their assent. They receive with a 

 faith, called robust, which seems so blind and unreasoning as 

 to border on credulity, dogmatic and dictatorial conjectures 

 of the most extravagant kind, convinced, but not by reason, 

 that the authors of them could not be mistaken in the views 

 they advanced with such positive and undoubting emphasis. 



The reception of materialistic dogmas by any intelligent 

 person who takes the trouble to think over their terms, and 

 is capable of appreciating, and analysing, and examining the 

 evidence upon which they are supposed to rest, is simply 

 impossible; and the applause with which these views have 

 been received in some quarters is to be accounted for by the 

 decline of thought, and the indisposition on the part of the 

 public to trouble to think at all on the merits of the arguments 

 presented to them. Is there one acquainted with the powers 

 and actions, and results of living, of any form of living matter, 

 who will declare that he believes the doctrine that non-living 

 matter alone is the source of all life, and will state the 

 grounds of his belief ? 



Bear in mind that no state of matter known, no mere 

 chemical combinations, no mechanical contrivances, no 

 machinery ever made, can be caused to exhibit phenomena 

 resembling in any really essential particular those which are 

 characteristic of every form of living matter that exists in 

 nature, and which, we must infer, have characterised every 

 particle that has ever existed since the first appearance of 

 primitive life on the earth. 



Neither can any known form or mode of ordinary energy 

 construct or form, direct, control, or regulate. Nevertheless, 

 it is taught far and wide that vital actions are due to the 

 energy which belongs to ordinary matter, and that, therefore, 

 vital action is but a modified form of ordinary physical or 

 physico-chemical action. Vital action, it is said, differs in 

 degree only from actions which occur in the non-living world. 



As regards the nature of that remarkable process of growth 

 which takes place in all things living we find great diversity 

 of opinion. Some, indeed, maintain that growth is not a vital 

 process at all, but that it essentially consists of the aggrega- 

 tion of particles of matter ; nevertheless, no one who regards 

 growth as a physical operation has appealed to any definite 

 case of growth to show that the intimate changes which occur 

 are really of the character he asserts. The growth of a leaf, 

 for example, seems to be very widely removed from the mere 

 aggregation of particles of matter. 



