116 PROFESSOR LIONEL BEALE^ F.R.C.P., E.R.S., ON THE 



say that a time will come when death shall be universal, and 

 that all life shall cease ? 



The idea of any relation having been established between 

 non-living and living, by gradational advance from lifeless 

 matter to the lowest forms of life, and so, onwards to the higher 

 and more complex, is scarcely more than a vague surmise, and 

 not the slightest evidence in its favour is supplied by the facts 

 of any section of living nature, of which anything is known. 



The life of the very lowest organisms that exist, or that have 

 ever existed, is just as wonderful, and in all respects just as 

 inexplicable by fact and reason, from a physical stand-point, 

 as are life, mind, and soul of man himself; and it is as 

 impossible now, as it would have been in ancient time, to 

 account for vital actions of the lowest simplest organisms in 

 living nature, although our present knowledge is by comparison 

 infinitely great. 



The lowest living particles noiv in existence cannot be 

 regarded as in any sense higher or more advanced than the 

 lowest simplest life of remote past ages, nor was the lowest 

 simplest primeval life in any sense or degree nearer to the 

 inorganic ; and we can give no better account, say, of the 

 vibration of the most ancient cilium of the lowest primeval 

 protozoon, than of one of a mollusc of to-day, or of a cilium 

 that belongs to a single living particle detached from the 

 mucous membrane of the air passages of man. 



Physical authorities do not appear to have considered what 

 particular matter in various parts of a living organism, is the 

 exact seat of those unseen vital actions characteristic of all that 

 lives, or the real nature of the matter to which only the term 

 living can be correctly applied ; for, by far the greater part of 

 any living plant or animal, is not alive, perhaps ceased to live 

 months or years ago. The bulk of the bark and nearly all the 

 wood of a living tree, for example, is as dead while the tree is 

 growing, as it will be when the tree has been cut down. No 

 living organism is alive in every part ; and of many living forms, 

 by far the greater part of each one has long ceased to live. 

 Living matter, and matter that has ceased to live, indeed exist 

 in every organ and tissue of man and animals at every period of 

 life. 



The tissue already formed does not groio, cannot increase of 

 itself, like living matter, nor does tissue form new tissue ; neither 

 is tissue nourished, though permeated by constant slowly moving 

 streams of Huid, circulating in its insterstices, which fluid 

 contributes to its preservation in the normal state, and prevents 



