LIVING GOD OF LIVING NA'J'URE FROM THE SCIENCE SIDE. 287 



dead. For instance, the tendons are dead. The point is this, that 

 if you take the growing part of the skin, even of an old man, if you 

 cut off the outer dry part and come to the lower part, take a very 

 thin layer and transfer it to the surface of another individual which 

 has been properly prepared to receive it, it grows. Therefore it 

 seems to me, the test as to life or not is, if matter is living it will 

 grow. Non-living matter will certainly not grow, and the word 

 growth comprehends wonderful changes. Nothing can be used for 

 growth — for increase in living things unless it is dissolved. All the 

 matter, all the atoms must be dissolved in water somehow before 

 they can be appropriated and grow. 



Mr. KouSE. — When you speak of the matter being absolutely 

 dead you mean it has no living particles within it 1 



Professor Beale. — No living power. 



Mr. Rouse. — The cell walls of it are dead ? 



Professor Beale. — The cell walls are dead. 



Mr. Rouse. — But the cell substance then is alive 1 



Professor Beale. — Yes. 



The Secretary. — There is one point on this, and the previous 

 discussion which has occurred to my mind as a mistaken idea about 

 life which I wish to just state with due deference. Professor 

 Beale has said that when life departs from a body no one knows 

 what becomes of it — you cannot tell what becomes of it — it ceases — 

 as if life was an entity. An entity, if it left the body, we might 

 know something about what becomes of it — it might enter into 

 another combination. But as life is only a condition of existence, 

 it is not an entity and you cannot speak of it as going elsewhere, or 

 disappearing, or entering into any new combination. As the 

 Professor has clearly pointed out, life must come from life, but it 

 means, I apprehend, that one living body has the power of 

 communicating that condition of existence which we call life, but 

 not, as it were, importing into the other body some definite object 

 or entity. I was reading in a weekly paper a recent article on this 

 very subject, and the writer seemed to deal with the question of 

 life as if it was an entity. I said to myself. This seems to me to be 

 an entirely erroneous view ; it is not an entity ; it is not a substance 

 . so to speak ; it is a condition. Now I do not know what force that 

 would have with my friend, the Chairman, when he speaks of the 

 .question of the resurrection. I have not thought that question out, 



