LIFE NOT CORRELATED FORCE. 



Notwithstanding all that has been asserted 

 to the contrary, not one vital action has yet 

 been accounted for by physics and chemistry. 

 The assertion that life is correlated force rests 

 upon assertion alone, and we are just as far 

 from an explanation of vital phenomena by 

 force hypotheses as we were before the dis- 

 covery of the doctrine of the correlation of the 

 physical forces. In short, this most important 

 discovery in physics does not affect the question 

 of the nature of the phenomena peculiar to 

 living beings. 



Each additional year's labour only serves 

 to confirm me more strongly than before, in 

 the opinion that the physical doctrine of life 

 cannot be sustained, and when I review in my 

 mind the evidence upon which the doctrine of 

 vitality rests, it appears to me extraordinary 

 that any one can persuade himself that a thing, 

 possessing in itself the power or property of 

 transforming matter and force in a definite way, 

 is itself mere matter and force, — that that which 

 converts is no more than that which is con- 

 verted. Because, as Dr. Gull remarks, " a me- 

 chanical cause in its simplest form is evolved 

 into its effect by suppression," it does not 



