50 CONDITIONING OF LIVING MATTER. 



thing is, after all, nothing more than a machine. No wonder 

 the public are already convinced that this is so ; and who 

 would not rather receive in faith so lucid a statement 

 of the case as the exact truth, than take the offensive course 

 of asking those learned in mechanical thought what was to 

 be understood by the learned phrases they are continually 

 evolving? At the same time it seems reasonable that a 

 generalization so broad and all-embracing, and of such 

 general application even as this, should be subjected to 

 careful examination before it is enforced by law, or accepted 

 as an article of belief. There are one or two points that 

 suggest themselves which it may be worth while to con- 

 sider here. In the first place, is it not desirable to enquire 

 exactly in what part of the living organism is lodged the 

 machinery which, as it is affirmed, conditions the force of 

 everything which is introduced into the living organism as 

 food ? If it be held that soft plastic, colourless, formless 

 matter "conditions," it must be admitted that our living 

 machine is unlike any other machine, and we enquire 

 if any machine is known to our teachers which " condi- 

 tions" upon the same principles as the soft plastic matter of 

 a living being. If the " conditioning " occurs at all in the 

 latter substance, it is certain that it must be conducted upon 

 principles totally different from those upon which " condi- 

 tioning " is effected by any machinery yet made known to 

 us. This word "conditioning" must be comprehensive 

 indeed if it can be employed in speaking of the phenomena 

 of a thing with a very definite form and structure which 

 we have ourselves made, and know all about, and also 

 correctly applied to the phenomena of matter which is 

 certainly structureless, of the nature of which we know very 



