IDENTITY OF PARENT AND OFFSPRING. 211 



Hackel says that all the laws of self-multiplication 

 in its higher forms are involved substantially in the 

 simple self-subdivision by which self-multiplication 

 occurs in the lower forms. We have organisms that 

 multiply by budding, and by seeds, and others by 

 egg-cells ; but at the last analysis there is a physical 

 identity between parent and child, and an immaterial 

 identity behind that physical identity. Hackel says 

 that laws of hereditary descent may be summed up in 

 the physical identity of parent and child. He holds 

 that life is only a mechanical action of molecular 

 particles. But we here have rejected his authority 

 on that point. We hold that life is more than me- 

 chanical action. Hackel affirms (History of Creation, 

 vol. i. p. 199, American edition) that " the life of 

 every organic individual is nothing but a connected 

 chain of very complicated material phenomena of 

 motion." Virchow knows better than that. Lotze 

 knows better than that. We know better than that. 

 This doctrine of Hackel's has lately been suffering 

 severe persecution in Germany; and I shall not pause, 

 at the end of perhaps twenty lectures against the 

 mechanical theory, to justify the definition of life as 

 the co-ordinating power behind germinal matter. 



11. Vitality, life, and soul are to be carefully dis- 

 tinguished from each other. 



12. In the higher forms of self-multiplication there 

 is vitality in each of the two elements which unite 

 to form a germ. 



In the oak, for instance, we have self-multiplication 

 by stamen and pistils, and their two elements, whicb 



