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higher animals, as well as every other living thing, begins its life as 

 a minute spherical particle, hardly to be distinguished from those 

 minute particles of simple living matters suspended in the air. 

 The particle consists of colourless transparent semi-fluid matter, 

 capable of moving in any part and in all directions. Man and 

 animals, plants, fungi, monads, thus exhibit the same appearances, 

 and the matter of which they consist exhibits similar characters. 

 Each primitive particle was derived from matter like it, which 

 existed before it. It was simply detached from a parent mass." 



Dr. Huxley, who may be considered, in this country at least, the 

 leader of the physical school, considers the properties of Protoplasm, 

 and the part which it exercises in the animal kingdom, to be 

 nothing more than properties of the material substances in which it 

 is found, exactly parallel to the properties of water and other in- 

 organic substances. This is, in effect, the physical theory, first 

 broached in England at the commencement of the present century, 

 by the justly celebrated Mr. Lawrence, and which has ever since 

 had warm advocates among scientific men. The phenomena of 

 life are, in fact, according to these advocates, properties of matter 

 originating in its most refined, remote, and subtle subdivisions, and 

 manifested in the various acts and habits of the organism through 

 which they are exhibited. To do justice to this theory a great 

 amount of additional statement and quotation would be requisite, 

 which, however, the limits of the present paper necessarily pre- 

 clude. It cannot be denied that the hypothesis possesses a con- 

 siderable amount of verisimilitude, and has been supported by 

 arguments exhibiting much ingenuity and plausibility. We are, 

 however, bound, if for no other yet for these very reasons, to give 

 attentive heed to the facts adduced and arguments advanced on 

 the other side, by those who maintain the vital theory. 



Before stating these arguments in somewhat of detail, it may be 

 remarked that the advocates of the physical theory have, of late 

 especially, manifested a strong tendency to depart from the region 

 of true science and established fact, and to soar into the sublimated 

 and unsatisfactory one of nebulous theory and speculation. Thus, 

 as Dr. Beale remarks ( "Life Theories," p. 13) — 



