ON THE WORD POWER. 219 



again, " a power, force, or property of a special kind ;" 

 and he protests against the ridicule with which, he 

 says, these opinions are received. I am one of the last 

 who would be disposed to ridicule any opinion coming 

 from such a source, but I think comment is allowable. 

 In the first place, the words life, force, and power are 

 used in such a variety of senses, that, to anatyze 

 them all, would take too long, and lead to repetition, 

 so I may refer to the former part of this chapter, where 

 life is defined as an action, and therefore can be neither 

 a force nor a power : force, again, is, as above said, 

 always separable from matter in idea, and active forces 

 are so in reality, and Beale himself constantly argues 

 against the physico-chemical school that life cannot be 

 a force in the only proper physical sense of the word. 

 So he simply uses the word force, and also property, 

 as synonymous with power. Now the word power is 

 in common life used in a triple sense, meaning at one 

 time the ability to do a thing if the force were 

 furnished ; at another, simply the force necessary for 

 the work ; in a third, both together. In the sense of 

 force it has already been illustrated. Dr. Beale uses 

 it ambiguously, but often in the last sense, for he 

 attributes to living matter a power of spontaneous 

 movement, while at the same time he denies that it 

 can create force, and is thus inconsistent. But at any 

 rate it is always with him a something separable from 

 matter, yet not a force ; which can cause matter with 

 force to grow, develop, and form structures simul- 

 taneously in all their parts, which shall be harmonious 

 when complete, and parts of which structures shall be 

 of no use for perhaps years after they are formed, and 



