NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



So, when Huxley, forty years ago, defined life 

 in terms of water, ammonia, and salt, unpleasant 

 things were said. To rid himself of the epithet 

 of "crass materialist," he had recourse to the 

 subtleties of the good Bishop Berkeley. 



For this there is no need now. In a recent 

 book, The Response of Matter, the distinguished 

 physicist of Calcutta, J. Chunder Bose, has done 

 much to strike down the last distinction between 

 living matter and dead. Just as there is no longer 

 a "missing link" in the chain of Darwinian evolu- 

 tion, so there is no longer a dividing line between 

 plant and animal, between mineral and vegetable, 

 between the animate and the inanimate. There is 

 no "dead" matter. 



In some obscure degree, all matter lives. 



