LIVING GOD OP LIVING NATURE FROM THE SCIENCE SIDE. 285 



cultivate for ourselves. One thing on the first page struck me as 

 being remarkable, where the Professor points out the multiplicity 

 of living particles that go to form, if I understand aright, one life — 

 that one life is composed of a multitude of little lives. I cannot 

 help thinking that there is a great deal of truth in that thought. 



Professor Beale. — They all come from one original one. 



The Chairman. — Then with regard to the passage where the 

 Professor points out that water is essential to life I would ask a 

 question, which I know how he will answer of course, is there a 

 living particle in a dry seed, a seed that appears to be dry ? I think 

 perhaps he might tell us something very interesting about that. 

 What seems to come out rather strikingly when we read that "the 

 tissue or structure died when it was formed " in the new body, and 

 yet went on I suppose to be carried on in that new body, is the 

 old Mors janua vitce view of forces. I was also struck with the 

 thought that vitality has both living products and dead products. 

 If I understand aright the living particles produce on the one side 

 dead bodies and on the other side new living particles. Might it be 

 that the form of life which we think of as spiritual or the resurrec- 

 tion life may be that in which the products will all be living, and 

 that that may explain many of those points with regard to the 

 scriptural idea of the resurrection life where there is an ascendance 

 over the laws of matter 1 



Professor Beale. — If I may reply to the last question first, it 

 seems to me when any actual living particle dies it is impossible to 

 suggest what becomes of the life that is gone. Where it has gone 

 it is impossible to say. It ceases ; it does not become converted into 

 force as has been said. There has been a remark about " Agnostic." 

 ' ' Agnostic " is used in two very different senses — as if one knew not 

 at all, and also as if one was not certain. The Agnostic has said 

 distinctly and many times that man is a machine and all his actions 

 are mechanical. Now that seems to me not an Agnostic observation, 

 it is a very positive affirmation that man is a machine. The answer 

 to that is that man is not a machine, and not one of his actions is 

 mechanical. There are no mechanics at all in living things. That 

 is the point. But it is said your brain and muscles move — they live. 

 That is true, but the part of matter that forms a great part of the 

 brain is not living matter at all. It cannot reproduce itself, whereas 

 all living matter can. Many would say that the bark of the living 



