INVESTIGA TION GENERALL Y PURSUED. 1 7 5 



call physical and chemical changes vital changes because 

 they occurred in a living body, nor should we have spoken 

 of simple living things as machines, although no machinery 

 whatever could be detected in them. Our conclusions would 

 have been absolutely incompatible with those arrived at by 

 many modern writers, and now widely diffused. But it does 

 not follow by any means that, because doctrines are popular, 

 they are correct, or in any way nearer the truth, than views 

 which have not had the advantage of having been forced 

 into notoriety. Our leading journals have of late years 

 supported, more or less decidedly, general scientific con- 

 clusions which have been strongly advocated by those 

 interested, instead of being allowed to gradually gain by 

 their own merits the advocacy of those qualified to judge ; 

 while, on the other hand, much that has been written upon 

 the other side has been suppressed. It is, indeed, quite 

 curious to observe how intensely anxious some anonymous 

 scientific writers appear to be to win over readers to purely 

 physical views. Many instances might be cited, but I shall 

 content myself by directing the reader's attention to an 

 article by a writer in the " Saturday Review " for December 

 28th, 1872. This most confident person reviews Dr. Bas- 

 tian's " Beginnings of Life," and, with the help of the author, 

 explains how living forms may be developed from non- 

 living matter without progenitors, and quite independently 

 of the existence of the most subtle form of albuminoid 

 matter from which any physical basis of life could be 

 evolved. This authority shoots far ahead of any of his 

 predecessors; he has discovered a "poem" written upon 

 Nature's face, by which he is enabled to reconcile " Pan- 

 theistic philosophy" with the idea of one God ! It is worth 



