LIVING GOD OP LIVING NATUKPJ FROM THE SCIP]NCK: SIDE. 283 



(6) Can there be any reasonable doubt that life, vital power, 

 vitality, stands alone, a power sc, not related to any of the 

 forces, potencies, or properties of any ordinary lifeless matter, 

 and as far as existing evidence justifies us in concluding, in the 

 universe ? Whence originally came vital power in living nature, 

 and what becomes of it when it ceases at death, is at this time 

 unknown to science. 



(7) But, so far, there is no indication of life ever having been 

 brought within the domain of physical law. Rather does life 

 seem to be a power which I venture to think, will ere long be 

 regarded as allied to, if not to be actually included in, the 

 spiritual order of things. 



While it must be fully conceded that the most profound and 

 almost universally applicable generalization which ever 

 originated in a human mind was founded upon the fact 

 familiar to everyone, the fall of an apple in autumn, and though 

 it is not surprising that the universal law then discovered, has 

 been supposed to govern all matter in all states and places in 

 every part of the universe, was it likely that the contention 

 that matter in one particular state, living for a short time only 

 in this comparatively infinitesimal portion of the universe of 

 material infinity, should for a moment not only cease to obey, 

 or act contrary to the universally received universal law, but 

 behave as if there was 'no such law at all ? Philosophy and 

 reason alike have at times refused to listen to this fact — that there 

 is one state, in which matter resists and absolutely overcomes 

 the influence of gravitation. That matter in this one state only, 

 might and does move in every conceivable direction, and by 

 virtue of its own inherent power and notwithstanding the 

 ordinary tendency of every lifeless material particle to be drawn 

 towards, or to l3e pulled by the weight of lifeless particles 

 towards the earth, was not conceivable at that time ; the power 

 of self-movement being known only in matter that lives, 

 evidently inherited from the living matter from which it came, 

 and this from preceding living matter. 



Contemplating broadly the only livhuf nature of which we 

 have knowledge and experience, can we for one moment agree 

 that life and all living things obey this great " universal " law 

 of gravitation ? Do not countless members of the vegetable 

 kingdom by growing away from the earth as long as they live, 

 act contrary to that " universal law " ? In this growth are not 

 atoms and particles of matter moved, and somehow piled up one 

 above the other, against their natural tendency to be moved 



