338 NON-LIVING AND LIVING MECHANISMS. 



tureless living matter. No true analogy can, therefore, be 

 drawn between a watch and a living thing. Neither can 

 anything be gained by the use of arguments which are 

 correctly applicable only to things mechanical, for me- 

 chanics is altogether apart from the question. We now 

 know that the way in which the organism is made is not 

 the way in which the watch is made. Living things have 

 nothing whatever to do with machines and any comparisons 

 that may be instituted between them will serve only to mis- 

 lead and confuse. 



Non-living and living mechanisms are indeed abso- 

 lutely distinct. The first are constructed, built up by us 

 piecemeal. The last form gradually in their entirety, alto- 

 gether independently of human interference. But the con- 

 struction of neither can be adequately accounted for by 

 force. That each part of the machine was designed before 

 it was made and put together, we know ; but whether the 

 living being was designed before it was formed we cannot 

 tell. If however, we argue from machines to living things 

 we shall be wrong, because there is not, as I have shown, 

 the faintest analogy between the two. And if it be urged 

 that the comparison is only to be regarded as broad 

 and general or metaphorical, I would remark that the 

 progress of science has been in all times retarded by the 

 improper use of inaccurate general statements, and the 

 loose employment of metaphorical expressions. 



Any one who studies the structures and organs of a 

 living being which has come from a small structureless 

 particle of living matter, and particularly if he sees the 

 structures in action during life, may feel inclined to con- 

 clude that the several tissues were made to fulfil a particular 



