180 THE VITAL QUITE DISTINCT FKOM THE CHEMICAL. 



to make up their functions during life ; and moreover 

 that there is a strong probability that by still further 

 complexity of composition and grouping matter may be 

 capable of existing in the form of a substance possess- 

 ing the properties of truly living matter. But that is- 

 the utmost we can say. I have reviewed the argu- 

 ments of H. Spencer, Hackel, Bastian, and others, who 

 bring forward as efficient causes of vital action, the in- 

 stability and proneness to decomposition of the large 

 moleculed organic colloids (Spencer) ; the faculty of 

 imbibition (Hackel) ; the processes of catalysis and 

 fermentation, and the fact that a number of chemical 

 compounds usually formed by living bodies can also 

 be made from organic elements in the laboratory. 

 From these facts the conclusion is drawn by the school 

 to which the above writers belong, that there is an 

 unbroken chain of more and more complicated, merely 

 chemical actions from the simplest reaction up to the 

 complicated process of germ development. In opposi- 

 tion to this, reasons are given showing that the insta- 

 bility of the colloids has no counterpart in the living 

 matter which has the power of self-renewal and main- 

 taining its existence for years, and that, in fact, in this 

 respect the living matter displays the strongest con- 

 trast rather than resemblance to the chemical colloids, 

 for, as held by Fletcher, followed by Beale, the passage 

 back to the chemical state or death of the living 

 matter is a positive act belonging still to the vital 

 series instead of mere negative chemical instability. 

 That the faculty of imbibition no doubt is possessed 

 as a physical attribute by the protoplasm as well as 

 dead colloids, but that explains nothing of its peculiar 



