TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 85 



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 SO far as our observation at present goes, absolutely necessary ; tbat is, life has 

 never been known -n-itliout a living- being-, without a form, without a medium for 

 the exercise of the vital force, just as there is no nianiftstation of attraction or 

 heat without the medium (matter) through whicli they act. Thus we are im- 

 paled upon the horns of the dilemma — life is not manifested without a living; being 

 or medium, and the medium cannot exist without life — a dilemma from which our 

 knowledge of the properties of matter is, so far as I can see, unequal to 

 rescue us ; and our only refuge is in the admission of a creative power to 

 which the medium and' properties of life, in the same way as the medium 

 and ordinaiy properties of matter, owe their simultaneous existence. We must 

 allow this for the present, without reference to the future progress of discovery ; 

 and, without being seduced into that over-much wisdom which is another expres- 

 sion for foUy, must be content to reason from what we know. Further observation 

 may supply other bases for our reflection and widen the area of our thoughts by 

 showing that matter is endowed with properties which enable it to aggregate into 

 li\-ing fonns, but no sufficient groimd for such an assumption has yet been given, 



A subject for investigation, nearly akin to that last mentioned, and which may, 

 perhaps, some day, tend to throw some light upon it, is the transition fi-om life to 

 death, a change which, under ordinary circumstances takes place in the most deli- 

 cate, insensible manner ; so that it is impossible to say when and how life euds and 

 death begins. I speak not of that wide and sudden termination of the body's life 

 from disease or decay (that somatic death) which we usually associate with the 

 word " death," but which is in nature comparatively so rare that it may probably 

 rather be regarded as exceptional and abnormal than natural. I refer to the 

 mode in which the parts of the ultimate tissue of the body become changed and 

 cease to exist, a process so fine as to elude observation and to prove that the boun- 

 dary line between life and death is hard to define. Even in the instance of the 

 cuticle, a structure comparatively under the eye, as we watch the transition of the 

 spherical deeper components to the flattened forms of the superficial strata, and 

 the disintegration of the latter, partly by external influences, we are at a loss to 

 decide where living force ends ; indeed there seems to be no point at which that 

 can be said to take place. And if, with regard to the components of it and the 

 other tissues, we assent to the view that their external or "formed" parts are life- 

 less and their internal or "germinal " parts are alone endued with living properties, 

 we still have to ask, "Where is the division between the two ? Where does the 

 "germinal" or living end, and the "formed" or lifeless begin, and how is the 

 latter done away with ? Clearly it is not by an abrupt disintegration or solution, 

 but by some slow insensible process which savours rather of atomic change than of 

 destruction. Then, one is inclined to ask, if the passage from the living to the 

 unliving condition be of this insidious inappreciable natm-e, may there not be aeon- 

 verse of a like kind, an insensible origination of, or conversion into, life and life's 

 forms, going on somewhere in the far recesses of natm-e's womb. I do not think 

 we ai'e bound to shut out the thought of such a possibility. It seems a fair ques- 

 tion to entertain ; but admitting it as a question, we must refrain from the tendency 

 to give a hasty answer in the affirmative. 



Granted, therefore, for the present, that the medium, the living form, was given 

 or created with the vital property, does it remain the same in kind through all 

 succeeding generations ? or is it capable of undergoing changes, slowly and gra- 

 dually, or, perhaps, if needs be, more rapidly, so as to adapt it to various circum- 

 stances and conditions, so as, in short, to evoke in time tlie div erse forms which 

 animal life is known to assume ; or must each of those forms have been the result 

 of a special creation similar to those which we suppose in the first instance ? One 

 might have judged this to be a question which a careful examination and com- 

 parison of the different species, and the circumstances under which they are found, 

 would have enabled us to decide with tolerable ease and certainty ; but it was 

 found not to be so. On the one hand we see changes in each individual whereby 

 the complete being is evolved from the simple germ, changes that are suggestive 

 of a corresponding evolution of the varied animal forms from one huml)le beginning. 

 "We find all the difterent animals emanatiug from the same point as its centre, tlie 

 simple germ which presents precisely the same features iu them all. We find them 



