HI ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 1 .".9 



ever may not be the effect of a material and 

 necessary cause, and that human logic is equally 

 incompetent to prove that any act is really spon-z^- 

 taneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, 

 by the assumption, has no cause ; and the attempt < 

 to prove such a negative as this is, on the face of 

 the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philo- 

 sophical impossibility to demonstrate that any 

 given phenomenon is not the effect of a material 

 cause, any one who is acquainted with the history 

 of science will admit, that its progress has, in all 

 ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means, the 

 extension of the province of what we call matter 

 and causation, and the concomitant gradual banish- 

 ment from all regions of human thought of what, 

 we call spirit and spontaneity. 



I have endeavoured, in the first part of this dis- 

 course, to give you a conception of the direction 

 towards which modern physiology is tending ; and 

 I ask you, what is the difference between the con- 

 ception of life as the product of a certain dis- 

 position of material molecules, and the old notion 

 of an Archseus governing and directing blind 

 matter within each living body, except this that . 

 here, as elsewhere, matter and law have devoured ^ 

 spirit and spontaneity ? And as surely as every 

 future grows out of past and present, so will the 

 physiology of the future gradually extend the 

 realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive 

 with knowledge, with feeling, and with action. 



