396 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



mated by a motion of their ultimate particles. The suc- 

 cess of his contention, according to the learned and labori- 

 ous Dr. Berthold/ entitles Toland to be regarded as the 

 founder of that monistic doctrine which is now so rapidly 

 spreading. 



It seems to me that the idea of vitality entertained in 

 our day by Professor Knight closely resembles the idea 

 of motion entertained by his opponents in Toland's day. 

 Motion was then virtually asserted to be a thing sui gen- 

 eris, distinct from matter, and incapable of being gener- 

 ated out of matter. Hence the obvious inference when 

 matter was observed to move. It was the vehicle of an 

 energy not its own — the repository of forces impressed 

 on it from without — the purely passive recipient of the 

 shock of the Divine. The logical form continues, but 

 the subject-matter is changed. *'The evolution of nat- 

 ure," says Professor Knight, "may be a fact; a daily 

 and hourly apocalypse. But we have no evidence of the 

 non-vital passing into the vital. Spontaneous generation 

 is, as yet, an imaginative guess, unverified by scientific 

 tests. And matter is not itself alive. Vitality, whether 

 seen in a single cell of protoplasm or in the human brain, 

 is a thing sui generis, distinct from matter, and incapable 

 of being generated out of matter." It may be, however, 

 that, in process of time, vitality will follow the example 

 of motion, and, after the necessary antecedent wrangling, 

 take its place among the attributes of that ** universal 

 mother" who has been so often misdefined. 



That ** matter is not itself alive" Professor Knight 

 seems to regard as an axiomatic truth. Let us place in 



' "John Toland und der Monismus der Gegenwart,** Heidelberg, Carl Winter. 



