4 
PROF. LIONEL S. BEALE, F.R.C.P., F.R.S., ON VITALITY. 57 
matter, which then becomes living, and this, as far as we 
know, is the only way in which living matter has ever been 
produced. There is no gap, no jumping of the non-living 
particle into the living state. There must be absolute con- 
tact, an absolute mingling or blending, and as it were an 
interpenetration of the non-living into the living. The 
power or property of the living is communicated to the new 
matter, which up to that moment was but the food intro- 
duced from without. In attempts to explain there has been 
much confusion, as I have said before, in the use of words. 
“Organic,” for instance, has been used where living or 
“vital” is meant. “Organic” is applied to much matter 
which is not alive; that which is organic need not have 
been made by living things at all. There are hundreds of 
substances which are “organic” and can now be made in 
the laboratory, but no chemist has yet turned out a living 
particle, though some enthusiasts who are not chemists have 
confidently declared that the thing will be done. Everyone 
who patiently studies living matter itself, and the important 
part which this structureless living matter plays in the 
formation of tissue, knows that this artificial manufacture 1s 
and will ever remain impossible, 
No one who has studied the subject would dream of» the 
chemical production of life, or of the spontaneous origin of 
life, even as a very remote possibility. Thousands of things 
that are organic are kept im bottles aud are not, of course, 
alive, or capable of livmg. Therefore, the word “ organic ” 
ought to be restricted to its proper meaning. So with regard 
to the words “increase” and “growth.” Increase apples 
equally to living and non-living. Growth is applicable to 
living matter and things only. There is no true growth in 
anything except through the agency of living matter. 
When we talk of the growth of a stone or a crystal, we mean 
only that they increase in size; but they do not grow. In 
the same way a number of instances will occur to every 
one, in which there is increase in dimensions but no growth, 
as I have for forty years contended, and so far only one or 
two have expressed any objection to my conclusions. Of 
these, one opponent in my own profession committed him- 
self to the opinion that, like trees, volcanoes grow. The 
same has been said of glaciers and many other things. But 
really it ought to be unnecessary to enter upon a discussion 
of so obvious a fact. 
Again, there are the words and the processes of “ integration ” 
