WHAT is LIFE? 17 



cient magic and heathen philosophy taught a universal 

 world-spirit, which is the life of all things. To this pan- 

 theistic theory the adherents of the dogma of the me- 

 chanical origin of the universe naturally gravitate. It is 

 more consistent with common sense and true philoso- 

 phy, as well as with the facts of science, to maintain an 

 essential difference between the animate and the inani- 

 mate. Can the dead twig move spontaneously, like the 

 living animalcule ? Does it assimilate food and repro- 

 duce itself like the Vorticella ? Or can a dead animal 

 respond to natural stimuli like the living ? Not a single 

 fact has been brought forward to prove the identity 

 of the living and the non-living. It is at best on- 

 ly a theory. "On the other hand," says Dr. Beale, 

 " thanks to the steady progress of minute investigation, 

 unnoticed by popular writers, and perhaps unknown 

 to them, the conclusion that life of every kind is dis- 

 tinct from ordinary forces is at this time more strongly 

 supported by facts, and more firmly established than it 

 ever was." * 



8. In order to defend the Monistic philosophy, and 

 the identity of animate and inanimate objects, some 

 argue that matter has no existence as such, but that 

 each atom is only a center of force. They thus repu- 

 diate the charge of materialism, since they teach that 

 every thing is spirit. This is a most subtle and in- 

 genious method of defense, yet is just as baseless as the 

 grosser Monism, which considers all to be material. 



Newton's law, of gravity being in direct ratio to the 

 mass of matter, that is, to the number of atoms in the 



* Beale's " Protoplasm." 

 2* 



