178 
Professor Owen on 
r Month 1 J' Microscopical 
LJounial, March 1, 1869. 
yi. — Professor Owen on Magnetic and Amoebal Phenomena. By 
Lionel S. Beale, M.B., F.K.S., Fellow of the Koyal College 
of Physicians, &c. 
Ir general agreement on fundamental principles amongst authori- 
ties who differ from one another in not unimportant particulars can 
establish proof, the physical theory of life should be accepted as 
true. But it may be doubted if one unprejudiced person accus- 
tomed to weigh scientific evidence has yet been convinced of the 
truth of this doctrine by the facts and arguments advanced in its 
favour. 
Every one is interested with the scientific speculations of our day ; 
but, although not a few of the arguments advanced are calculated 
to prejudice the judgment, some of them are more likely to provoke 
the smiles even of believers than to convince the reason of those 
most open to conviction. Men eminent among philosophers, che- 
mists, physicists, geologists, zoologists, and physiologists, seem to 
be vieing with one another in trying to force the acceptance of the 
dogma that life is but a mode of ordinary force, and that the living 
thing difi'ers from the non-living thing not in quality, or essence, or 
kind, but merely in degree. 
But is it not most remarkable that, of the many great authorities 
who support the physical theory of life, not one has succeeded in 
explaining to us the difierence between a thing living and the same 
thing dead ? And if those who advocate this notion do not believe in 
the actual annihilation of force when the living thing passes into the 
dead state, why do they not demonstrate the form or mode which 
the departing life-force assumes ? Until this is done, the physical 
theory rests on no scientific basis whatever ; it is a mere dogma, 
and, like other dogmas, must be promulgated by pure authority. 
Owen has lately avowed his belief in it ; but, unlike many of its 
advocates, he admits that on one or two points " proof is wanting. 
May I venture without off'ence to examine some of the grounds of 
the Professor's quahfied belief? 
Professor Owen says that there is nothing peculiar to living 
things in their power of selecting certain constituents, because a 
magnet selects also. It attracts towards it only certain kinds of 
matter. Nor, he further observes, is death characteristic of things 
living only; for if the steel be unmagnetized, is it not "dead"? 
" Devitalize the sarcode (Hving amoeba), unmagnetize the steel, and 
both cease to manifest their respective vital or magnetic phenomena. 
In that respect both are ' defunct.' " " Only," naively remarks the 
same authority, "the steel resists much longer the surrounding 
decomposing agencies." But is such reasoning as this likely to 
