MISUSE OF THE WORD FORCE. 



composition of the pabulum, &c. We might, perhaps, 

 suppose that the word "force" was here used, like the 

 vis insita or nisus formativus of the older authors, to 

 express a power depending on the properties of the 

 organized matters, but, unfortunately, just at this point 

 is given a note with the whole citations of the doctrine 

 of the conservation 01 force from Mayer to Bence 

 Jones. It is therefore impossible but that the student 

 should be misled into supposing that something existed 

 correlative with physical force and called a force, but 

 credited with powers far beyond the capability of any 

 force and hitherto only ascribed to imaginary entities 

 like the vital principle. The most singular application 

 of the idea of vital force is that of Dr. Maudsley, who 

 says :* 



" As there are different kinds of matter so there are different 

 modes of force in the universe ; and as we rise from the com- 

 mon physical matter in which physical laws hold sway up to 

 chemical matter and chemical forces, and from chemical matter 

 again up'to living matter and its modes of force, so do we rise 

 in the scale of life from the lowest kind of living matter with 

 its corresponding force or energy, through different kinds of his- 

 tological elements with their corresponding energies or functions, 

 up to the highest kind of living matter and corresponding mode 

 of force with which we are acquainted, viz., nerve element and 

 nerve force " (68). In illustrating this " upward transformation 

 of matter and correlative metamorphosis of force," he says, 

 " As one equivalent of chemical force corresponds to several 

 equivalents of inferior force, and one equivalent of vital force 

 to several equivalents of chemical force," &c. And again, " A 

 .single monad of the higher tissues would equal several monads 

 of the lower kinds of tissue or several equivalents of its force." 



From what has been said, it is obvious I must totally 



_* "Physiology and Pathology of Mind," 2nd edit. 



