326 LAUGEL'S PROBLEMS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 



denied without casting off at once all that our senses as 

 well as reason teach us. The simple fact of the trans- 

 mission of hereditary likeness through successive gene- 

 rations is in itself a volume of argument on the subject. 

 To say that a nisus, or force or forces, inherent in 

 matter itself, can create a series of living beings of defi- 

 nite forms and most complex functions, is either a naked 

 assertion without proof or a virtual admission of vital 

 force under another form of words. The generation of 

 life from life is, and probably ever will be, one of the 

 insoluble mysteries of philosophy. If asked what this 

 vital force is, we may answer by the counter-questions 

 What is gravitation ? What that force which puts 

 the ether of space into those marvellous motions which 

 we receive as light and heat ? These problems are all 

 of the same kind, involving questions with which no 

 present reasoning or conception can cope. 



We come, lastly, to a power closely associated with 

 those by which life is engendered, viz., the Force of 

 Volition, of the Will, an entity not less real in its action 

 on matter than any of those other unseen powers with 

 which we have been dealing. If, indeed, we phrase 

 the whole question as involving the origin of force, 

 there is none so direct and explicit in the relation of 

 antecedents and effects. And there is none of which 

 we have so clear a knowledge through the conscious- 

 ness of our own powers. Man feels that he has a will ; 

 he knows that his physical and moral forces are go- 

 verned by it ; and he concludes that the operation of 

 forces not directed by an intelligent will would lead to 

 the return of chaos. We will a certain bodily action, 



