348 Messrs. Cross and Bevan on the Correlation of 



of subjective impressions. Further, chemists are in the habit 

 of referring the phenomena of their science to the existence of 

 a force of chemical affinity, and that without any justification 

 more or less elaborate, in deference to its conditional character 

 or to the metaphysical questionings which underlie all our 

 natural science. And when we examine into the grounds 

 upon which our belief in a vital force may be said to be dis- 

 missed, we find that we have in them only the basis of a truer 

 knowledge than heretofore of what the vital force is and what 

 it is not. Since the dismissal of the hypothesis of spontaneous 

 generation, the distinction of matter into animate and inani- 

 mate has assumed a very sharp character. In the animate 

 world we have a province of distinct phenomena ; into this 

 world, matter is coerced and is made to manifest properties 

 distinct from those which it otherwise possesses ; and in this 

 world force is distributed and co-ordinated in such a way as to 

 compel the acknowledgment of agency. Speaking physically, 

 we admit that life is one of the narrowest — i. e. most exten- 

 sively conditioned of phenomena ; but this does not lessen our 

 belief in the working, under these conditions, of a special 

 agency. The minutely intimate correlation of life with its 

 chemical phenomena doubtless leaves in the minds of many 

 but a very narrow margin for the operation of the special 

 agency in question, and makes its assumption appear propor- 

 tionately gratuitous. At the same time we have no proof that 

 the science of "energy" affords the ultimate criterion of 

 natural truth; and we cannot recognize that it has done more 

 than modify the belief in a special vital force, though the 

 modification has been so deep as to convert it from being an 

 encumbrance to an effective aid to scientific progress. 



How far our progress, thus emancipated from a seriou< 

 impediment, may be expected to go, is a question which must 

 be relegated to metaphysics ; at the same time we hold that 

 the results of physical inquiry have as yet given no warrant 

 for anticipating, as the realizable ideal, that our science will 

 ever overleap the barrier of structural organization. The limi- 

 tation herein expressed seems to us so obviously to define the 

 natural attitude of the chemist towards living matter, that not 

 without the strongest proofs will he change it for the extreme 

 of conceivable ideals ; and in the practical work of investiga- 

 ting the products of life and growth he will find such abun- 

 dant confirmation of his natural impressions as to remain 

 convinced that the distinction of the material universe into 

 animate and inanimate is real and transcendental*. 



* This subject will be found exhaustively discussed in ' Chemical Diffi- 

 culties of Evolution,' by J. J. McLaren (1877). 



