THE VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES. 49 



shown that the vital properties of matter resulted from 

 some higher and more general qualities from which the 

 physical might also be derived. He was now about to 

 place this speculation on a more assured basis of fact and 

 reasoning. And the study of the nervous system which 

 he had begun in Edinburgh, was to be pursued more and 

 more eagerly till it was to result in a complete reversal, 

 largely on physiological grounds, of that interpretation of 

 the moral consciousness which he had recently put forward 

 with such security of faith. 



The publication of Mr. Grove's views on the " Corre- 

 lation of the Physical Forces," in 1846, gave a vivid stimulus 

 to Dr. Carpenter's reflections on this subject. He saw at 

 once that they could be applied and extended within the 

 domain of physiology. He had himself for some time 

 urged that what were commonly called the vital properties of 

 organic matter were simply the result of the capacities for 

 action, with which its constituent molecules were endowed, 

 when called into play under conditions suitable for their 

 combination into living forms. He was now prepared to give 

 more coherent shape to this conception. When the British 

 Association met at Oxford, in 1847, he twice presented it 

 for discussion. " In the Medical Section, where I spent 

 " most of this morning," he wrote to his wife, on June 25, " I 

 "gave some views which I had formed on the correlation of 

 "the Vital and Physical Forces suggested by Mr. Grove's 

 "pamphlet. I shall bring these forward also in the Physical 

 " Section, where I think they will be better appreciated." 

 Discussions such as these helped him to consolidate his 

 thoughts ; they were further developed in scattered hints 

 in the pages of the Medico- Chirurgical Review ; and in due 

 time he felt that they were ripe enough for communication to 

 the Royal Society. The following letters, to his mother, and 

 to an old fellow-student, show the general drift of his ideas : — 



