Scientific Sophisms. 263 



changes were proceeding, such a machine, it 

 is true, would in some particulars be like a 

 living organism." But how stands the fact ? 

 " If any apparatus we could contrive developed 

 all possible modes of force motion, heat, light, 

 electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and any 

 number of others yet to be discovered that 

 apparatus would still present no approach what- 

 ever to any organism known. Of course such 

 a thing might be called an organism, just as a 

 watch, or a steam-engine, or water, or anything 

 else, may be called a creature, a worm or any 

 other living thing called a machine. But every 

 living machine seems to grow of itself, builds 

 itself up, and multiplies, while every non-living 

 machine that has yet been discovered is made. 

 It neither grows, nor can it produce machines 

 like itself" " Will mechanics account for the 

 movements of an amoeba ? Where is the being 

 that grows by mechanics, and where is the 

 mechanical apparatus that can be said to grow ? 

 Has mechanics taught us the difference between 

 a living seed and the same seed when it has 

 ceased to live?" * 



1 1. To revert, for a moment, from " vitality " 

 to " horologity." When Mr. Lewes a writer 

 distinguished for his opposition to what he 

 ' Dr. Beale, " Protoplasm," pp. 47, 486. 



