360 ACKNOWLEDGMENT CLAIMED. 



I venture to claim the acknowledgment that neither the 

 growth, nor the multiplication, nor the formative capacity, 

 nor the movements, manifested by any living matter, can 

 be adequately accounted for by any known properties of 

 matter, or explained by any laws yet discovered. I hold 

 that I have a right, as a scientific man working and thinking 

 strictly within scientific limits, and upon scientific grounds 

 only, to advance hypotheses which may in a measure help 

 us to explain the above phenomena peculiar to the living 

 world. Some such hypothesis as that advanced by me is, I 

 think, fully justified, unless it is decided by common con- 

 sent that facts are to be ignored and denied, or repudiated 

 by an authority calling itself scientific, which has been some- 

 how invested with power to crush every opinion with which it 

 could not agree. That the idea of any power of an order 

 different from that to which physical forces belong, is, I 

 admit, in these days repugnant to many minds; but so 

 indeed are the ideas of God, miracle, providence, will, 

 future state ; all of which would have been abandoned long 

 since, if it could have been shown that they were scientifically 

 untenable if scientific facts could have been adduced, by 

 aid of which life and mind could -have been accounted for 

 without assuming the operation of supernatural agency of 

 some kind ; but this has not been done, and certainly cannot 

 be done at this time. 



