THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 



life is correlated motion, it is a legitimate sub- 

 ject for scientific inquiry; while, if life is not 

 correlated motion, the changes in the matter 

 cannot be investigated. 



Less than thirty years ago, says the Harveian 

 Orator, it was gravely questioned (but by whom 

 is not stated) whether a living body could not 

 generate some of the elements of which it was 

 composed by its own vital force, and it was 

 considered that an organism formed the ma- 

 terials of its higher structures, and was capable 

 of transmuting elements. Is there not here 

 just the suspicion of a suggestion intended that 

 persons who in these days consider life to be 

 different from, and in no way correlated with, 

 the ordinary forces of non-living matter, really 

 may have some strong affection for those 

 equally (?) absurd views of thirty years ago ? 



Surely it ought not to be necessary for me to 

 state that I do believe the correlation of forces, 

 as well as the truths of physics and chemistry, 

 as firmly as any man can believe them. I 

 never supposed, not even when I was a first 

 year's student, that an organism formed the 

 materials of which it was composed out of 

 nothing or out of itself, or that one element 



