110 PROFESSOR LIONEL BEALE, F.R.C.P., F.R.S., ON THE 



The Minutes of the last Meeting were then read and confirmed. 

 The following paper was then read by the Author : — 



ON THE UNSEEN LIFE OF OUR WORLD AND OF 

 LIVING GROWTH. By Professor Lionel S. Beale, 

 F.E.C.R, F.E.S., Government Medical Referee for England, 

 Vice-President of the Victoria Institute. 



T¥ the paper I am about to read, I shall venture to draw 

 attention to some broad general questions of interest, which 

 have an important bearing on recent doctrines lately very 

 popular, in relation to our modern science, philosophy and 

 religion, but considered and discussed from a scientific and 

 rational point of view only. 



There is in my judgment evidence of an absolute difference 

 between living matter and living growth, and every kind of 

 matter that is not in the living state, including the enormously 

 preponderating amount of matter of our world, in very different 

 states, and of diverse composition and the matter of the universe, 

 that cannot under any conceivable circumstances, live. The 

 distinction of all life, from all non-life, rests upon facts of 

 ordinary general observation, as v.^ell as on minute investigation 

 with the highest magnifying powers yet made. 



I shall maintain, that there is no reliable evidence of any 

 gradual transition from any condition of non-life, to any 

 condition of life whatever — that all matter that lives, has 

 unquestionably proceeded from matter that lived before it, and 

 that to this truth, there has probably been no exception, since 

 the time of the creation. 



The facts and arguments which so far have been advanced, 

 against religious truth, and belief in God and Infinite Power, in 

 living nature, are in my opinion unreliable, even if considered 

 from the side of science only. Man is man from the earliest 

 period of his existence as a structureless germ ; and there is no 

 proof or evidence, that man has descended from, or is or was, in 

 any way specially related to, any other organism in living nature, 

 through evolution or any other process, and that in support of 

 all such conjectures concerning man's origin, there is not at this 

 time a shadow of scientific evidence. 



For little more than fifty years, has it been possible for man to 

 study the minute structure of living organisms, or to investigate 

 the wonderful phenomena of life and growth and vital move- 



