270 CAUSE OF VITAL MOVEMENT. 



to confess itself unable to adduce a single example of such 

 movement in matter that does not live. The cause of the 

 movement of the non-living is outside it, and may be in- 

 dependent of it, while the cause of the movement of the 

 living seems to be within it, and to be of, or belonging to, 

 the living matter as long as it moves. 



In order that people may be led to accept the dogma 

 that the living and non-living are one, they are told that 

 passive external agencies like heat and other modes of 

 motion are active stimuli and excitants of all the phenomena 

 of living beings. The development of the egg, it is said, is 

 a consequence of the action of heat, while in truth the heat 

 is but an external condition, one of many attendant external 

 circumstances under which the marvellous phenomena of 

 development proceed. But if these phenomena are to be 

 regarded as consequences of heat, we may as well maintain 

 that a steam-engine is a consequence of the coal that takes 

 part in generating the steam that turns the lathes that are 

 used in its construction. All the force, all the heat, all the 

 motion of the non-living universe is incompetent to de- 

 velop a living monad, and this the physicists know. In 

 their view of the construction of living beings, they ignore 

 the fact of the existence of an already existing organism. 

 But this existence is absolute. They ingeniously invest 

 attendant circumstances and external conditions in the 

 garments of causes, and persuade the public that these are 

 all in all. They then ignore or deny the inheritance of life 

 which is all in all and without which all matter, all force, 

 all possible attendant circumstances and external agencies 

 are as nothing. 



The growth of bioplasm, its nutrition, the passage of 



