54 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 



the non-living world are included ; while others 

 maintain that life will eventually prove to be 

 but another mode of the ordinary forces of 

 matter. For my part, I am ready to abandon 

 altogether the idea of vitality, and to dismiss it 

 with other ideas, considered by the new school as 

 mere prejudices imbibed during the irresponsible 

 state of childhood, as soon as convincing evi- 

 dence of error shall be adduced ; but I refuse 

 to give up these for the threats or gibes of a 

 school whose tenets rest upon the mere autho- 

 rity of modern assertion, and whose forcible 

 dicta, however determined and arrogant, are 

 justified neither by reason, nor by observation, 

 nor by experiment. 



There is a mystery in life. A mystery which 

 has never been fathomed, and which appears 

 greater the more deeply the phenomena of life 

 are studied and contemplated. In living centres, 

 far more central than the centre as seen by the 

 highest magnifying powers — in centres of living 

 matter where the eye cannot penetrate, but 

 towards which the understanding may tend, — 

 proceed changes of the nature of which the 

 most advanced physicists and chemists fail to 

 afford us the faintest conception. Nor is there 



