634 THE DISEASES AND DISORDEES OF THE OX. 



should explain most, abnormal as well as normal manifestations 

 of life. These principles should lie at the foundation of 

 rational biology, morphological and physiological, whether 

 regular or irregular, normal or abnormal. 



SECTION XII.— THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM AND 

 THE DISORDERS CONNECTED THEREWITH. 



THE REPRODUCTION OF THE SPECIES (a). 



During the gradual origin of the universe and its contents 

 from the chaotic confusion of bygone aeons a differentiation has 

 arisen betwixt living and non-living things. Of all the many 

 distinctions we are in the habit of drawing, when we pause to 

 look around us and to take a sweeping survey of the innumerable 

 objects contained in the world in which we live and move and 

 have our being, by far the deepest and the most important is 

 that which subsists betwixt animate and inanimate things. Yet 

 though these two widely separated groups, into which everything 

 which exists upon this earth can be arranged, are characterised 

 by the most essential and deep-lying differences, nevertheless 

 when we try to formulate and make clear to ourselves and to 

 the minds of others the broad line of demarcation which appa- 

 rently separates the lowest of living things from inanimate 

 material, we are obliged to humble ourselves to the extent of 

 saying that we cannot do it, and that this broad line gets nar- 

 rower and still more narrow, the more deeply we peer into the 

 previously hidden aggregates of organisms opened to our gaze 

 by the modern microscopic methods. 



Moreover, it is far from being an easy task to frame an exact 

 or even a good and fairly workable definition of what is really 

 implied by the term life, and there are very many who would 

 hesitate to accept the idea that the life of a human being is in 

 all essential respects to be compared with the life of an animal. 

 Despite all the reiterated teachings of the materialistic school of 

 science and of thought, there probably never was a time in the 

 history of the world when so many of the foremost men of the 

 day hold with no unsteady faith the belief that we human beings 



