10 WHAT MAY BE 



have been misled and confused by these force doctrines, 

 and many have been impressed and awed by them who ought 

 to have pointed out exactly where assertions in fact form 

 have been palmed off as the results of observation and ex- 

 periment. One position being accepted as proved, the 

 mind is easily induced to conclude that other positions 

 claimed have been really established. It would be exhaust- 

 ing to easy-going persons having scientific tendencies, to 

 investigate the grounds upon which each successive step in a 

 scientific argument is said to have been based. No wonder, 

 therefore, that the conclusion pointed out as correct, by 

 authority, should be generally accepted without enquiry, 

 instead of being examined, proclaimed untenable, and dis- 

 missed as a figment of the imagination, as in many cases it 

 deserved. Even now, devout and learned men are preparing 

 to modify the views they have hitherto entertained upon life 

 either from a belief that the new doctrine was not worth con- 

 testing, or that it would be futile to attempt to disprove it. 

 Not a few have accepted the conclusion that the evidence 

 adduced in favour of the view that the vital phenomena at 

 least of the lowest living forms are due to physics and 

 chemistry only, is conclusive. They are ready to admit 

 that the formation of the simplest forms of life may be due 

 to the operation of ordinary mechanical laws, because they 

 have been assured that the argument for the spiritual 

 nature of the faculties of man, and for the existence of 

 Deity, is not in any way weakened thereby ; and, say they, 

 supposing it be true that by the light and heat of the sun 

 living beings actually are formed, was not the great source 

 of energy and life itself created by God ? After all, they 

 discover that the causes of the phenomena are but traced 



