346 THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. [LECT. 



or of the co-ordinating machinery, or of both, on 

 which the phenomena of disease depend. 



Those who are conversant with the present state 

 of biology will hardly hesitate to admit that the con- 

 ception of the life of one of the higher animals as the 

 summation of the lives of a cell aggregate, brought 

 into harmonious action by a co-ordinative machinery 

 formed by some of these cells, constitutes a permanent 

 acquisition of physiological science. But the last 

 form of the battle between the animistic and the 

 physical views of life is seen in the contention whether 

 the physical analysis of vital phenomena can be carried 

 beyond this point or not. 



There are some to whom living protoplasm is a 

 substance, even such as Harvey conceived the blood 

 to be, " summ& cum providentia et intellectu in finem 

 certum agens, quasi ratiocinio quodam ; " and who 

 look with as little favour as Bichat did, upon any 

 attempt to apply the principles and the methods of 

 physics and chemistry to the investigation of the vital 

 processes of growth, metabolism, and contractility. 

 They stand upon the ancient ways ; only, in accord- 

 ance with that progress towards democracy, which a 

 great political writer has declared to be the fatal 

 characteristic of modern times, they substitute a 

 republic formed by a few billion of " animulse " for 

 the monarchy of the all-pervading " anima." 



Others, on the contrary, supported by a robust 

 faith in the universal applicability of the principles 

 laid down by Descartes, and seeing that the actions 

 called " vital " are, so far as we have any means of 



