66 Prof. Owen on Life and Species. 
originates force from within myself, by calling it an ‘immate- 
rial’ entity, mental principle, or so 
But, so it is; in the endeavor to clearly comprehend and eX- 
plain the functions of the combination of forces called ‘ brain 
the physiologist is hindered and troubled by the views of the 
nature of those cerebral forces which the needs of dogmatic 
og have imposed on mankind. 
w long physiologists would have entertained the notion of 
f life, or ‘ vital principle,’ as a distinct entity, if freed from 
this baneful influence, may be questioned ; but it can be truly 
affirmed that physiology has now established, and does accept, 
the truth of that statement of Locke,—‘ the life, whether of a 
material or immaterial substance, is “not the substance itself, 
but an affection of it.* Religion, pure and undefiled, can best 
answer, how far it is righteous or just to charge a neighbor 
with being unsound in his principles, who holds the term ‘ life’ 
to be a sound expressing the sum of living phenomena ; and 
who maintains these phenomena to be modes of force into 
which other forms of force have passed, from potential to active 
states, and reciprocally, through the agency of these sums or 
combinations of forces 1 impressing the mind with the ideas sig- 
rms ‘monad,’ ‘moss,’ ‘ plant,’ or ‘ animal.’ 
If the poyaticest rejects the theological sense of the term 
‘life,’ without giving cause for the charge of unsoundness in 
religious principles does he lay himself more open to the charge, 
by rejecting also the theologian’s meaning of the term ‘ spirit,’ 
of the term ‘soul,’ of the term ‘mind,’ and, we pst add, of 
* cccxxxvi’’, vol. i, p. 761. As the authority of a Physiologist and late Presi- 
dent of the R oyal Socie ty may be cited for ascribing such vital phenomena to an 
ible — ee EL ce remark by which Sir B. ps 
eets the obvious objection of the divisibility, without destruction, of acri 
para — Tt i es true that. mao of our sea celebrated os physiologists, toi 
observing the oe i polypi by the mere division of the animal, has 
come to the conclusion that the mental principle, torgs ng our ses nape: pre- 
indivietblo, as being so preé vd ntly, bore | all other things in nature. 
indiy Seine cepts divisible, not less than the corporeal fabric with 
app ” (p. 115.) reader, -, +008 for new light and f secre 
= B. Sad ‘that, a as is the authority of Miiller geneh 
uite an 
~ Soaneit§ &e. (p. ’ 116) hie 
. affects t the 
