OWEN'S VIEWS. 57 



ties for studying it carefully. This authority does not 

 tell us what he means by the daily and hourly conver- 

 sion of physical and chemical into vital modes of force, 

 but surely such an investigator as Owen will not deem 

 it right to leave this bare assertion without any fur- 

 ther explanation. Every one interested in this won- 

 derful problem naturally desires that he should give us 

 some idea of the view he has formed in his own mind 

 regarding what takes" place at the moment when 

 the mode of the force ceases to be physical and 

 becomes vital when the passive atoms become 

 active organisms when the inanimate leaves the 

 state of lifeless rest and assumes that of living acti- 

 vity when the matter acquires converting powers 

 which it never possessed before when, after having 

 collected together by aggregation, the now living 

 matter begins a new existence, and, instead of aggre- 

 gating, its particles move away from one another 

 separate, never to join again. Any statements affirm- 

 ing that living particles have been seen to coalesce and 

 join, under a power of less than five hundred diameters, 

 are not to be relied on. A mistake is very easily 

 made, and before an observation advanced in favour 

 of such a statement can be accepted as true, it must 

 receive confirmation ; not only on account of the 

 errors possibly made by the observer himself, but be- 

 cause the conclusion is opposed to many broad facts 

 which have been demonstated and accepted, and par- 

 ticularly the fact of the formation of these same 



