INCREASED VITAL ACTION. 115 



has been known to act in any way at all analogous to 

 this. The results must, therefore, be attributed to some 

 peculiar power capable of controlling and directing both 

 matter and force. 



It has been suggested that the different substances and 

 different structures produced by germinal matter at different 

 periods of development may depend upon the different 

 surrounding conditions present when the changes occur. 

 This, however, is no explanation at all, for the surrounding 

 conditions to which a mass of living matter in a growing 

 organism is exposed, as well as the circumstances con- 

 cerned in the production of these, are complex. They are 

 not simple external conditions, but are in part the result of 

 external circumstances, and in part of a previous state of 

 things in the establishment of which pre-existing vital 

 powers, associated with germinal matter, played no unim- 

 portant part. It has been shown that the production of 

 formed matter is due to the death of living matter under 

 certain conditions, which is itself a highly complex phe- 

 nomenon, and cannot be explained without supposing 



1. Certain internal forces capable of causing the elements 

 of the matter to arrange themselves in a certain definite 

 manner totally different from that in which the ordinary forces 

 of matter would cause these elements to be arranged ; and 



2. Certain influences operating from without (i.e., surround- 

 ing external conditions) tending to prevent the supposed 

 internal forces from exerting their sway. The composition, 

 structure and properties of the matter produced, must, it 

 seems to me, be referred to the influence of these different 

 antagonistic forces acting upon matter in opposite directions. 



I 2 



