PROTOPLASM. 



a living thing suddenly passes from the living into the 

 dead state ; but yet they do not demonstrate the new form 

 or mode which the departing life-energy assumes, or explain 

 to us what in their opinion becomes of it. If the dead 

 thing only differs from the living thing by a few degrees of 

 heat or units of force, why can we not, by supplying more 

 heat or force, prevent dissolution, or cause the actions to 

 go on again after they have once stopped ? 



In fact this view has been supported by assertions 

 instead of by facts, and of the arguments hitherto advanced 

 in its favour by its most powerful advocates, all are incon- 

 clusive, and some quite unjustifiable. He who chooses may 

 accept upon faith as an article of belief the dogma that all 

 the actions of living beings are due to ordinary forces only 

 but it is absurd to put forward such a conclusion as if it 

 had been proved, or as if it were in the existing state of 

 knowledge capable of proof. So long as the advocates of 

 the physical doctrine of life contented themselves with 

 ridiculing " vitality" as a fiction and a myth, because it could 

 not be made evident to the senses, measured or weighed, 

 or proved scientifically to exist, their position was not easily 

 assailed ; but now when they assert dogmatically that vital 

 force is only a form or mode of ordinary motion, they are 

 bound to show that the assertion rests upon evidence, or it 

 will be regarded by thoughtful men as one of a large num- 

 ber of fanciful hypotheses, advocated only by those who 

 desire to swell the ranks of the teachers and expounders 

 of dogmatic science, which, although pretentious and autho- 

 ritative, must ever be intolerant and unprogressive. 



