^jSISJi, jSyTff ] ct^^^ Microsco^ie Physics. ■ 21 
We are continually asked why we object to the term vital force ? 
For the same reason that in previous ages other advanced thinkers 
have objected to various phenomena of nature being explained, 
by the supposition of the action of " ^hlogiiston,'^ and of the great 
principle so long firmly beheved in, that " nature abhors a vacuum." 
In fact, our point lies in this simple fact — that men are apt 
to believe that they have got ideas, whereas they have only got 
words. 
Space forbids me to enlarge on this tendency, but I must give 
one illustration. 
There are many substances known to chemists, both simple and 
compound, which will not unite when brought together, unless a 
third substance be present. Yet after their union no alteration can 
be detected in this third substance, which has apparently effected 
the change. This action has been named a catalytic action, and 
two distinguished foreign chemists have supposed that there must 
be a special catalytic force. Some of our leading English chemists 
have preferred to call this action simply contact action. Doubtless, 
experiments will at last enable us to understand what action 
ensues when these contacts occur, and thus furnish us with an ex- 
planation instead of a name. 
The only condition on which life can be sustained is that of 
unceasing death. The death of the cells is indispensable to the life 
of the being. How can we escape the conclusion, that the life of 
the individual is the sum total of the life contained in the matter 
of which the cells were composed ? When we evolve heat by the 
combustion of coal, we acknowledge that we simply reproduce 
the solar heat that had been absorbed by the coal-plants. If we 
admit the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, we have to admit 
that the power of forming cells must have existed in the elements 
of which they are composed, and that only favourable conditions 
were required to enable the first cell to be produced. 
" Dr. Beale objects that living and non-living protoplasm 
cannot be regarded as the same substance, and therefore ought not 
to be called by the same name."* 
We speak of bone and flesh, hair and skin and nails, whether 
alive or dead ; why should we be called on to give two names to 
protoplasm ? 
One of the most curious and interesting, I have heard it called 
the most inexplicable, of all the phenomena of life, is that of sus- 
pended animation, let us say, by drowning, when by the application 
of electricity, heat, or artificial respiration, the life is apparently 
restored. 
* Dr. Beale has never given any satisfactory reason for this division of the 
materials of the tissues into living and dead. The argument from the use of 
carmine is, in our opinion, simply a Petitio principii. — Ed. M. M. J. 
