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



matter yet discovered. There is no reliable evidence that one 

 single particle of living matter has ever been produced or made, 

 from matter that was not alive, and that did not itself proceed 

 from matter that already lived ; and, as all individual life has 

 certainly ceased in deatli, leaving the matter and its material 

 properties behind, must it not follow that life as we know it in 

 this woild, can never be proved to be due to physical changes,, 

 or to any inherent properties or qualities of matter or of its 

 elements, which do not live, or to the operation of any physical 

 laws, conditions, or circumstances, yet discovered by man ? 



Let us ask whether there is any law or property in nature, 

 which indicates any necessary connexion between life, and any 

 definite elements of matter found in this world — in which 

 world alone, as far as we can learn, there are constantly 

 countless living particles and living organisms, growing, 

 multiplying and dying, and being replaced by their successors 

 — the very same atoms of matter, thus living and dying over 

 and over again — the matter with its forces and properties 

 persistent and im changed, reonaining — the life which for a time 

 controls and rearranges material atoms, according to the 

 wonderful life-power with which each kind of life has been 

 endowed, existing for its allotted time only and then ceasing for 

 ever — Matter, its physical forces and the laws by which it is 

 governed apart from life — Life, a power se, the effects of the 

 operation of which man sees, and to some extent may understand, 

 but which must in a short time cease in every individual living 

 particle, and witliout nnderejoing eonversion into any hind of 

 energy. Life therefore mnst be a voiver, distinct from all 

 material properties forces and agencies. 



Can we then with our general knowledge of living nature, 

 and of the intimate changes in life and growth, as re voided l^y 

 minute research, give up our belief in God, simply l)ecause \\^e 

 have been assured by some recent scientific authorities, that we 

 are but matter, and that we are animals ; or believe tlmt we 

 are machines, formed by, and acting on the same mechanical 

 principles, as those machines which man himself designs, and 

 makes, repairs and improves ? From all such doctrines, if 

 guid(^d by reason and facts of science and observation, we 

 shall dissent, at least until the advocates of physical life bring- 

 forward stronger reasons for the acceptance of their conjectures, 

 than they have yet been able to adduce. During the last 

 century, physical doctrines of life were, in my opinion 

 unreasonably and unjustly pressed upon the public for 

 acceptance. 



