

NECESSARY BELIEFS. 71 



form. The public understands these facts. What 

 you have said, if you please, has gone very much 

 further than any .thing I have said. Pardon me for 

 this digression, but let me affirm that there was not 

 a little of consideration of the matter before it was 

 decided that what you said should be preserved in 

 any record of the proceedings here. I repeat, that, 

 as a matter of taste, I should have been willing to 

 have left it out ; but, as a matter of influence, and as 

 a means of tiding readers through dry discussion, I 

 was willing to leave it in, after the precedents of 

 Phillips and Carlyle. I hold that my opinions are 

 not worth noticing, but that the general agreement, 

 week after week, month after month, and year after 

 year, of an audience as peculiar as this, is a sign of 

 the times ; and I find that those who are most 

 opposed to what you have said, and to its being 

 recorded, are those who are most opposed to the 

 opinions you have approved. [Applause.] 



If we are convinced that life has been correctly 

 defined, we can now go on to make inferences from 

 that definition, of the most commanding interest. 



1. Matter is co-ordinated in living tissues. 



2. Some adequate force co-ordinates matter in liv- 

 ing tissues. 



3. The co-ordinating force must exist before it can 

 act. 



4. It must act before it can co-ordinate the matter 

 contained in the tissues. 



5. The co-ordinating force, therefore, exists and 

 acts before the organism which it co-ordinates. 



