INTO FIRST LIVING MA TTER. 293 



Mr. Darwin nowhere attempts to prove that life is due 

 solely to physical action, and it might be correctly said 

 that the doctrine of natural selection implies the existence 

 in living things of forces not belonging to the physical 

 category. And though there is no doubt whatever that 

 physical agencies do effect changes in living things, acting 

 upon the bioplasm, and occasioning modifications in the 

 structures produced from it, it by no means follows that if 

 the agency by which a change is effected is physical, the 

 change effected must also be physical, and the thing 

 changed amenable to physical laws only. The thorough 

 evolutionist does not admit the existence of the matter of 

 the two kinds or in the two states as I have described in 

 Part II : the living matter and the lifeless or formed matter, 

 but there is nothing in Mr. Darwin's view that conflicts with 

 the conclusions I have arrived at from a very different course 

 of study. 



It has been shown that bioplasm of every kind is the seat 

 of changes which exhibit no analogy with any changes known 

 to be effected by any form or mode of force yet discovered, 

 nor is the difference between one form of bioplasm and 

 another to be expressed in force terms. Surely if Mr. Darwin 

 may with propriety speak of the nature or constitution of 

 the organism, I may be permitted to refer changes to the 

 peculiar nature, properties, or powers of the bioplasm. 

 Why are observations to be dismissed with scorn, be- 

 cause the facts observed force the observer to conclude 

 that the different results of the development of different 

 forms are to be referred to difference in the vital power 

 that determines the peculiar constitution and subsequent 

 changes and behaviour of every different form of living 



