THE INTERPRETER I45 



ism.' ' l But he proceeded to justify his words by 

 the following comparison, the design of which was to 

 show that the ultimate nature of matter is as fully a 

 mystery as that of mind, and that the terms in which 

 we speak of the one are equally applicable to the 

 other. 



Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, when 

 brought together under certain conditions, give rise to 

 the complex stuff, protoplasm, which manifests what 

 is known as life. When two of these elements, 

 oxygen and hydrogen, are mixed in a certain propor- 

 tion, and an electric spark is passed through them, 

 they disappear, and the result is water. In the one 

 case we talk of a "vital force" having stirred the 

 dead elements into living matter ; but in the other 

 case we do not talk of a something called " aquosity " 

 having blended the two invisible gases into visible 

 water. Is not the one process as mysterious as the 

 other ? 



Does anybody quite comprehend the modus operandi 

 of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of 

 oxygen and hydrogen ? 



What justification is there, then, for the assump- 

 tion of the existence in the living matter of a some- 

 thing which has no representative or correlative in the 

 not-living matter which gave rise to it ? What better 

 philosophical status has " vitality " than " aquosity " ? 

 If the phenomena exhibited by water are its 



1 Lay Sermons, Preface, p. vii. 



