NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



actions, proceeding in a regularly ordered way. All 

 this is not nearly so interesting as the idea of pro- 

 digious wars and bloody struggles going on within 

 the body, though all invisible to the eye. And to 

 the minds of many folk it is disagreeable ; it creaks 

 of machinery, or, as many say, smacks of material- 

 ism; it seems to destroy something of the mystery 

 which shrouds the life processes, and it appears as 

 if a good portion of the world, for some reason or 

 another, prefers ignorance to knowledge. 



All this is more or less a matter of taste ; mean- 

 while it is worth noting that all the advance that 

 has been made in our ideas of vital phenomena has 

 lain entirely in an identification of bodily processes 

 and forces with the simple processes and forces of 

 the inanimate world. Lavoisier began this when 

 he showed that the combustions which go on in the 

 lungs and in the grate or the stove are one and the 

 same. If the chemistry of the living cell is still 

 obscure and full of difficulties, we know enough to 

 know that all future gain will come along the same 

 lines. 



One great step has been made, and that of a most 

 unexpected sort. So bewildering is the variety of 

 the things which go on in an animal, or even in a 

 plant ; so vastly different, let us say, the forms and 

 functions of a coral polyp and a whale, that one is 

 led almost inevitably to suppose a corresponding 



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