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nation of Life. In connexion with this subject Professor Tyndall 

 thus expresses himself : — 



" Trace the line of life backwards, and see it approaching more 

 and more to what we may call the purely physical condition. We 

 reach at length those organisms which I have compared to drops 

 of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the 

 protoge?ies of Haeckel, in which we have ' a type distinguishable 

 from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character.' 

 Can we pause here ? We break a magnet, and find two poles in 

 each of its fragments. We continue the process of breaking, but 

 however small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the 

 polarity of the whole. And when we break no longer, we prolong 

 the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not urged 

 to do something similar in the case of life? Is there not a temp- 

 tation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that 

 * nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without 

 the meddling of the gods ?' or, with Bruno, when he declares that 

 matter is not ' that mere empty capacity which philosophers have 

 pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all 

 things as the fruit of her own womb ?' The questions here raised 

 are inevitable. They are approaching us with accelerated speed, 

 and it is not a matter of indifference whether they are introduced 

 with reverence or irreverence. Abandoning all disguise, the con- 

 fession that I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the 

 vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, 

 and discern in that matter, which we in our ignorance, and not- 

 withstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto 

 covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form 

 and quality of life." 



Now we are here introduced to a clearly physical investigation, 

 and the mode wherein Professor Tyndall proposes to pursue it is 

 given in the very opening sentence of his address : — 



" An impulse inherent in primeval man turned his thoughts and 

 questionings betimes towards the sources of natural phenomena. 

 The same impulse, inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific 

 action to-day. Determined by it, by a process of abstraction from 

 experience we form physical theories, which lie beyond the pale of 

 experience, but which satisfy the desire of the mind to see every 

 natural occurrence resting on a cause." 



These latter words exactly describe the process pursued by 



