1 10 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



advanced that, for the present, it had to be abandoned. As I had prepared 

 what was intended to be the introductory lecture, it occurred to me that it 

 might not be unwelcome to the members of the Philosophical Institute, 

 especially as it was upon a subject of the highest interest, but one which, 

 at the same time, has not been treated at any of the meetings of the various 

 branches of the New Zealand Institute, so far as I am aware. The subject, 

 then, with which I purpose to occupy you for a short time this evening is 

 Life and its correlation to physical force. The definition I have given of m.y 

 proposed subject will be sufficient to show you that it does not include those 

 higher processes of animal life, which include consciousness, sensation, and 

 mental phenomena, — it does not refer to that breath of life which, we read 

 in the book of Genesis, God breathed into the nostrils of man, — but to the 

 physical life which the mould that grows in our jam-pots enjoys in common 

 with man, and the mushroom and the oak equally with the elephant and 

 the whale. 



What then is this physical life ? It is not a substance, it is not an 

 existence, it is not an entity. We become cognizant of it through a series 

 of phenomena inseparable from matter. But our only knowledge of matter 

 depends upon the ways in which it affects our senses — in other words, we 

 know nothing of matter, excepting through the physical phenomena it 

 exhibits, which phenomena are capable of making such impression, through 

 our nerves, upon our brains, that they, in their turn, are capable of calling 

 into play the faculty of sensation or consciousness. In the first place, we 

 have the power of recognizing matter in actual motion, that is to say, 

 matter which has been set in motion by some external force, whatever that force 

 force may be. Secondly, from this we gather that there are certain powers 

 which are able to set inert matter in motion, and we term these the forces of 

 nature. And in the third place, we recognize certain properties in matter itself 

 — inherent in and essential to it ; and these, for the most part, are the result 

 of inertia. 



As a brief illustration of the way in which matter in motion makes 

 itself cognizable by our brains, I may mention firstly sound. If a piece of 

 metal be struck, or a string in a state of tension be made to vibrate, or 

 air be blown into a tube under certain conditions, the vibrations thus pro- 

 duced are communicated to the surrounding atmosphere, and these sonor- 

 ous vibrations are of a peculiar nature. They are not waves in the sense 

 of a progressive sideway movement, but a series of elastic attenuations and 

 condensations which travel in lines coincident with their own movements. 

 When the sound-waves strike the ear they are conveyed by a specially 

 arranged apparatus to a portion of the brain where that peculiar sensation 

 is aroused which we term sound. We hear the vibrations. 



