1 2 ABSOL UTE DIFFERENCE 



from ordinary forces is at this time more strongly supported 

 by facts, and more firmly established than it ever was. 



It is quite true that men eminent among philosophers, 

 if not among divines, as well as some of the most dis- 

 tinguished living physicists, chemists, and naturalists, have 

 accepted this physical theory of life. They think that life 

 is but a mode of ordinary force, and maintain that the living 

 thing differs from the 'non-living thing, not in quality, or 

 essence, or kind, but merely in degree. True, they do not 

 attempt to explain the difference between a living thing and 

 the same thing dead. They would perhaps tell us that living 

 and dead are only relative terms ; that there is no absolute 

 difference between the dead and living states ; and that the 

 thing which we call dead, is, after all, only a few degrees 

 less actively changing than the thing we say is alive. But 

 this sort of reasoning is not convincing, seeing that although 

 matter in the living state may suddenly pass into the dead 

 state, this same matter can never pass back again into the 

 living condition. The dead animal has been likened to a 

 steam-engine at rest, but there is at least this difference 

 between the two, that the last will resume its work as 

 before, if its fires are relit, but the dead animal or man can 

 never be made to work again if its machinery has been 

 once brought to a stand-still. Have not the results of the 

 action, in the production of tissue and in the formation of 

 living beings of that something more than mere force, been 

 made to stand for that something itself? The processes of 

 disintegration and chemical change occurring in matter 

 which has ceased to live a direct consequence of prior 

 changes which occurred while the matter was yet alive 

 have, we shall see, been regarded as the life itself. 



