102 THE CELL DOCTRINE. 



escape from utter materialism and necessarianism. 

 But it is impossible to prove that anything what- 

 ever may not be the effect of a material and neces- 

 sary cause, and no act is really spontaneous, since a 

 really spontaneous act is one which has no cause. 

 Yet any one familiar with the history of science will 

 admit that its object has always meant, and means 

 the extension of the province of matter and causa- 

 tion, and the concomitant gradual banishment from 

 all regions of human thought, of what we call spirit 

 and spontaneity, that is, the object of all science 

 has been and is to find out the causes of all phe- 

 nomena; and there is no difference between the 

 conception of life as the product of a certain dispo- 

 sition of material molecules and the old notion of an 

 Archseus governing and directing blind matter within 

 each living body, except that here, as elsewhere, mat- 

 ter and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity. 

 And moreover, the physiology of the future will 

 gradually so extend the realm of matter and law, 

 until it is coextensive with knowledge, with feeling, 

 and with action. It is this progress of knowledge, 

 according to Prof. Huxley, which so many of the 

 best minds conceive to be the progress of material- 

 ism, which they watch with such fear and powerless 

 anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the 

 great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. We 

 know nothing of this terrible "matter," except as 

 the name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of 

 states of our own consciousness, and as little of that 

 " spirit," except that it is also a name for an un- 

 known and hypothetical cause of states of conscious- 



