194 Transactions of the Society. 



their combination in a certain definite manner. Thus certain sub- 

 stances are formed which have a pecnhar chemical composition, 

 and in certain cases special properties and endowments not 

 possessed by substances that can be formed in any other way. It 

 seems to me it would be as unreasonable to maintain that the bricks, 

 or rather the clay of which they are made, or the silica and alumina 

 of the clay, or the properties of the elements entering into the 

 composition of these substances, design, fashion, and build the 

 house, as to assert that the formation of living things is due to 

 the physical properties of the materials of which their bodies are 

 composed. Yital power impresses as it were its seal upon the 

 matter — upon the structures of the living organism — and ought 

 surely therefore to be considered as above and superior to the 

 mere stuff that it moulds. Vitality, or vital power, forces, bends, 

 arranges, and fashions just as man himself moulds and fashions the 

 clay he works with, only silently, invisibly, more perfectly, and in 

 a definite and prearranged manner, and without mind or will or 

 ingenuity or instruments or organs. 



Judging from the facts, is it not indeed more probable that the 

 ordinary properties, the attractions, the affinities, of mere matter 

 are in suspension rather than in action while the matter continues 

 to be in the living state ? When these properties and affinities 

 come into play, do we not get from the matter that was alive albu- 

 minous matters, fat, and other things, of known properties and 

 definite composition ? But neither these nor any definite com- 

 pounds existed when the matter was living. They came into being 

 at the moment of its death. The idea of these substances existing 

 in the living matter is inadmissible, for if they were there, some 

 of them could be demonstrated. Such a substance as fatty matter 

 cannot, of course, exist in the living state ; fat cannot grow and 

 form fat out of materials which contain the elements of the sub- 

 stance in different states of combination, any more than granite 

 can. If it be conceded that during the living state the ordinary 

 properties and affinities of the matter are suspended, it will be 

 admitted that none of the ordinary properties of material particles 

 can be reasonably credited with the ability to interfere with the 

 exercise of affinities ; and therefore it seems reasonable to conclude 

 that some totally different power, vitality or vital 2)otver (which 

 same, unlike the ordinary properties of the matter, is lost or ceases 

 to act when living matter dies), is the true cause of the exceptional 

 state in which the material particles are held while the matter 

 remains living. 



But thought may take us yet further. Gradually passing 

 inwards towards the centre, through vast concentric layers of 

 particles, we arrive at last in imagination near the centre of a 

 particle far too minute to be visible, where the atoms of lifeless 



