296 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. [Oct. 



and chemist are most emphatic iu declaring that life is 

 an energy outside their domain. 



The statements of a chemist, a physicist and a biolog- 

 ist are added. From the character and attainments of 

 these men, their testimony, given after years of the most 

 earnest investigation and refiectiou, is worthy of consid- 

 eration. 



When Liebig was asked if he believed that a leaf or a 

 flower could be formed or could grow by chemical forces, 

 he answered : " I would more readily believe that a book 

 on chemistry or on botany could grow out of dead mat- 

 ter by chemical processes." 



" The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter 

 is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific inquiry 

 hitherto entered on. Its power of directing tiie motions 

 of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle 

 of our human free will, and in the growth of generation 

 after generation of plants from a single seed, are infi- 

 nitely different from any possible result of the fortui- 

 tous concourse of atoms ; and the fortuitous concourse 

 of atoms is the sole foundation in philosophy on which 

 can be founded the doctrine that it is imj^ossible to de- 

 rive mechanical effect from heat otherwise than by tak- 

 ing heat from a body at a higher temperature, convert- 

 ing at most a definite proportion of it into mechanical 

 effect and giving out the whole residue to matter at a 

 lower temperature." — Sir William Thomson (Lord Kel- 

 vin). 



" The anagenetic (vital) energy transforms the face of 

 nature by its power of assimilating and recompounding 

 inorganic matter, and by its capacity for multiplying its 

 individuals. In spite of the mechanical destructibility 

 of its physical basis (protoplasm) and the ease with 

 which its mechanisms are destroyed, it successfully 're- 

 sists, controls and remodels the catagenetic (physical and 

 chemical) energies for its purpose." — Cope. 



