

MAUDSLEY ON HEREDITARY DESCENT. 49 



forming power ? A definite quantity only could have 

 been derived from the mother structure, and that 

 must have been exhausted at an early period of 

 growth. The obvious refuge of the vitalist is to the 

 facts that it is impossible now to evolve life arti- 

 ficially out of any combination of physical and chemi- 

 cal forces, and that such a transformation is never 

 witnessed save under the conditions of vitality." 

 (Body and Mind, English edition, p. 169.) 



Probably Maudsley's is the acutest question that 

 English materialism has ever asked. For one, I 

 agree most cordially with Professor Bowne of Bos- 

 ton University, in his work on "The Philosophy of 

 Herbert Spencer," when he says (p. 104) that " this 

 is the best thing the correlationists have said yet, 

 and it is the best that can be said." Wishing the 

 whole force of this argument to be appreciated, I 

 have cited Maudsley at length, and am anxious that 

 he should be read, not only in his new edition of his 

 "Physiology of Mind," 1877, but in his essays on 

 " Body and Mind," 1873. The latter work contains a 

 suggestive paper on " Conscience and Organization." 



Maudsley is not to be disputed when he says that 

 the germinal points absorb inorganic matter, and that 

 they transform it into other bioplasts and the various 

 tissues. As their power evidently grows by acqui- 

 sition of power from inorganic matter, who knows 

 but that it commenced so ? That is, who knows but 

 that spontaneous generation may be a fact, or that 

 there is any co-ordinating power behind these rhyth- 

 mically moving co-ordinated germinal points ? That 



