76 BEALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



their aggregation into tissue or secretion, by the mere 

 chemical action, or by any catalytic or metabolic action 

 of the living parts in the neighbourhood, far less by 

 any spontaneous power in the liquid blood itself; but, 

 in all cases, every particle must first enter into and 

 become part of the living, semi-solid matter itself. 



Such is the marvellously simple and beautiful 

 theory of Beale, and the central point on which his 

 whole new system of physiology turns, and which will, 

 no doubt, make his name imperishable. It gives to our 

 hand a plain solution of the difficulties which weighed 

 upon the materialist* theory of life. For, action at a 

 distance is only conceivable by means of force trans- 

 mitted by some suitable medium, while no possible 

 variety of what can be properly called force could 

 exert the formative powers characteristic of life. This 

 subject will be discussed in a subsequent chapter, 

 but, in the meantime., we may notice here that it has 

 relieved Fletcher from the dilemma in which he was 

 placed. The dilemma is thus stated in " Life, and the 

 Equivalence of Force," p. 103 : 



He speaks constantly of the vital functions of the several 

 tissues, while, at the same time, life is, with him, merely a 

 series of actions, depending on the properties of the substance 

 in which they take place, and, therefore, which cannot be com- 

 municated or conveyed in any degree. "With him, as regards 

 the higher animals, the parenchyma or capillary tissue was " the 

 seat of all the molecular actions of the body," thus including 

 secretion and nutrition, not only of all other tissues, but of the 

 ganglionic nervous matter itself. " But the ganglionic nervous 

 tissue, assuming this as the immediate seat of the property in 



* I mean in its physiological sense only, as \vill be explained after- 

 wards. 



