FALSE PHYSIOLOGY. ! 35 



foundations are always being altered. Facts receive new 

 interpretations, and very simple operations in living beings 

 often turn out to be very different from what they appeared 

 to be. Take for example, the question of the action of the 

 " cell," and its several parts ; consider the changes in views 

 that have forced themselves upon our minds in connection 

 with cell-action and cell-formation during the last quarter of 

 a century. Or, take the views generally entertained only a 

 few years since, and by many even at this time, concerning 

 the nature of the elemental unit of life what a foundation 

 upon which to build physiology ! Or, consider only the 

 various doctrines taught concerning "Life" during the same 

 period of time. What a clashing of principles ; what contra- 

 dictions ; what hopeless confusion of irreconcilable ideas ! 

 Or, take the doctrine of evolution, resting as it does upon 

 the dictum that organic and inorganic forces are one a 

 doctrine which has been shown to be unproved and not 

 provable at the present time. In the details of all these 

 questions what room there is for speculation, for differences 

 of interpretation, differences concerning the correct ex- 

 planation of elementary facts ! 



And are physiologists to stand by and watch in silence 

 the miserable attempts to found a new philosophy upon a 

 fictitious physiology? Is a physiologist not to be permitted 

 to criticise the physiological reasoning of philosophical 

 writers? Is a physiologist wanting in respect to philoso- 

 phers if he points out errors in their physiology, and shows 

 that their systems have in part been founded upon a science 

 of the living conceived by the imagination of poetical phy- 

 sicists, instead of being constructed upon the accurate 

 results of skilful observers and careful experimenters? If 



