xiv BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE 371 



investigation of the vital processes of growth, 

 metabolism, and contractility. They stand upon 

 the ancient ways ; only, in accordance with that 

 progress towards democracy, which a great 

 political writer has declared to be the fatal charac- 

 teristic 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 

 knowing, nothing but changes of place of particles 

 of matter, look to molecular physics to achieve 

 the analysis of the living protoplasm itself into a 

 molecular mechanism. If there is any truth in 

 the received doctrines of physics, that contrast 

 between living and inert matter, on which Bichat 

 lays so much stress, does not exist. In nature, 

 nothing is at rest, nothing is amorphous ; the 

 simplest particle of that which men in their 

 blindness are pleased to call " brute matter " is a 

 vast aggregate of molecular mechanisms performing 

 complicated movements of immense rapidity, and 

 sensitively adjusting themselves to every change 

 in the surrounding world. Living matter differs 

 from other matter in degree and not in kind ; the 

 microcosm repeats the macrocosm ; and one chain 

 of causation connects the nebulous original of suns 

 and planetary systems with the protoplasmic 

 foundation of life and organisation. 



B B 2 



