232 Dr. Beale Croonian Lecture. [May 11, 



toplasm" of certain vegetable cells, and the motion of masses of germinal 

 matter in various tissues of man and animals must be included in this class 

 of vital movements *. 



Ciliary action is, I think, a secondary phenomenon, due to changes going 

 on within the cell, but probably very intimately connected with the currents 

 flowing to and from the germinal or living matter, and the altered tension 

 thus caused in the cell. Ciliary motion is not dependent upon nervous 

 action, nor is it due to any disturbance in the surrounding medium. Ciliary 

 motion cannot be regarded as a vital movement, although it is probably 

 due to changes which are consequent upon vital phenomena. Cilia consist 

 of " formed material." 



* No one will be more ready to receive and acknowledge that these movements and 

 other phenomena characteristic of living matter are due to ordinary force than myself, 

 BO soon as the correctness of such a doctrine shall have been proved, or, indeed, any 

 advance towards this end shall have been made ; but as a working physiologist desiring 

 to see, and promote to the utmost, real advance in this department of science, I consider 

 it a duty to oppose as strongly as I can the practice pursued by some scientific 

 authorities in the present day, and especially in this country, of reiterating the assertion 

 that all the phenomena of living beings are to be accounted for by the action of ordi- 

 nary force. Nothing can retard true progress more than exaggerated statements with re- 

 ference to advance in any special direction. It is almost certain that the manifest anxiety 

 to substitute for quiet proof intense and positive language, merely indicates bias, if 

 not prejudice, in favour of views not supported by facts. I have already stated, not only 

 that the doctrine does not rest upon any sound evidence whatever, but have drawn 

 attention to the phenomena which occur in the simplest form of living matter, which 

 never have been, and which I believe cannot be explained upon any known physical or 

 chemical laws. Instead of these objections being answered, or the challenge to consider 

 the matter in detail being accepted, we are told that the " tendency of modern science is 

 towards this" apparently much-desired "end, and that although living matter cannot 

 yet be prepared by man, the day is not far distant when its artificial production will 

 be rendered possible," and so forth ! 



The fallacy underlying many of the modern doctrines is obscured, if not entirely 

 concealed, by the very ingenious choice of words. For instance, when it is stated, with 

 what appears to be learned precision, that force is "conditioned" by the ""molecular 

 machinery" existing in the cell, few probably Vould be led to inquire what the molecular 

 machinery was, and how the " conditioning " took place. Now it so happens that the 

 changes in question occur without the existence of anything to which the term machinery 

 can be properly applied. Instead of the living cell being like a machine, it is perhaps 

 less like a machine than anything else that we have any knowledge of. The " living 

 machine " is just a very minute mass of soft, colourless, transparent, semifluid matter, 

 endowed with very wonderful properties or powers, in which matter is decomposed and 

 its elements rearranged, while its forces are conditioned in a manner that cannot be 

 effected by man with the aid of the most perfect machinery and elaborate apparatus his 

 ingenuity has devised. Living matter is not a machine, nor does it act upon the prin- 

 ciples of a machine, nor is force conditioned in it as it is in a machine, nor have the 

 movements occurring in it been explained by physics, or the changes which take place in 

 its composition by chemistry. The phenomena occurring in living matter are peculiar, 

 differing from any other known phenomena ; and therefore, until we can explain them, 

 they may be well distinguished by the term vital. Not the slightest step has yet been 

 made towards the production of matter possessing the properties which distinguish 

 living matter from matter in every other known state. 



