22 ASSERTIONS AND DOGMAS. 



"ponderable and imponderable materialism," and are told 

 " that the scientific spiritualist (the believer in ghosts ?) of 

 the present day differs from the materialist of the present 

 day only (!) as far as imponderable differs from ponderable 

 matter." That is he who has "faith in witches, ghosts, 

 transmutations, and transmigrations," and cannot investigate 

 the foundations of natural knowledge differs from the mate- 

 rialists who alone may do so, only to the extent that matter 

 -without weight differs from matter which may be weighed ! 



Will any number of such extraordinary assertions as these 

 enable us to explain the movements of a little bit of living 

 matter ? Does the law of the conservation of energy 

 throw any light whatever upon the cause of the vibra- 

 tion of a single cilium ? Can anything be more monstrous 

 than the dogma that the phenomena of development are 

 due to inorganic forces alorie, or that inflammation of a 

 tissue results from increased motion imparted to its elements? 

 Again, what good is there in saying that all disease is 

 mechanical or chemical, when it is obvious that no disease 

 is mechanical and chemical only, and that no action which 

 is simply mechanical or chemical, or both mechanical and 

 chemical, constitutes disease ? It is only by ignoring facts 

 open to the observation of all that the position assumed by 

 many members of the modern physico-chemical school can 

 be made to appear plausible. 



It has been asserted over and over again that there is a 

 gradual transition to be observed from inorganic to living 

 matter, but of course no one has explained what he means 

 by the assertion, or has adduced an example of stuff in a 

 state of transition from the non-living to the living condi- 

 tion. The physico-chemical school pretends that the 



