180 PROFESSOR LIONEL BEALE^ F.R.C.P., F.R.S., ON TLFE 



thoughtful, and especially to the scientific members of my 

 profession, who are necessarily much interested in this all- 

 important question of the nature of life. May I hope that some 

 •of the general conclusions I have advanced, may at last meet 

 with the free criticism of those who have studied the question, 

 ^nd may have drawn inferences different from my own ? 



Tlie reunion of religion with that department of science 

 which is of the highest importance to the health and well-being 

 of mankind, in every part of this world, has been firmly 

 established in our own time. 1 mean, the reunion of the science 

 and practice of medicine and surgery, with religion, which has 

 for many years been growing in strength as well as in the 

 number of its advocates and supporters. May this reunion 

 soon include all who recognize true science, and the importance 

 of some knowledge of life and living nature ! By further 

 scientific investigation, it is certain that new truths will be 

 discovered, which will probably show that advance in 

 scientific knowledge is intimately connected with, if not 

 inseparable from, the progress and spread of religious thought. 



I look forward with confidence to the union of scientific and 

 religious views of living nature, and hope for the support of the 

 thoughtful of different religious opinions, and that many will 

 join in acknowledging the evidence we now have of the infinite 

 sustaining, as well as of the creating, power of the God of life, 

 the living God of the kingdom of life ; and of the absolute 

 separation of all life from all non-life in creation, from the very 

 beginning, of which beginning, nothing more has yet been 

 revealed to us by modern research than we are taught in the 

 first five words of the Bible. 



The life power of which probably most thoughtful students of 

 science are conscious, can only belong to human life. It is this 

 alone by which man is enabled to investigate the phenomena of 

 life and vital action of all kinds of living organisms and to 

 appreciate the mighty differences by which man's life power, 

 has ever been distinguished from that of the rest of living 

 organisms. 



By the " living particle " so often spoken of, especially those 

 particles belonging to man, I mean particles of soft structureless 

 matter already described, and consisting principally of water, 

 which are destroyed by the slightest touch, and by being removed 

 from their natural position, and also by being placed in water 

 or exposed to the air for a very short time. Such are the living 

 particles present in all our tissues and organs as long as we live, 

 in truth by the agency of which alone we live and move and 



