president’s address. 
489 
ceding universe in which the manifestations of energy were not defi- 
nite, in which, in other words, law did not regularly prevail, in which 
there are, for example, some good units and some bad ones, and in 
which, possibly, like the boys and girls at school, the good are some- 
times bad and the bad, at times, surprisingly good. It is sufficient 
for us now that we have a recognized law, and into its ancestry 
enquiry would be fruitless. The effort of the general acknowledgment of 
a law fixing definitely the rules of operation of the causes of motion and 
development of the material universe has been sought in every depart- 
ment of human investigation. If all kinds of matter are modifications 
of one kind, if all modes of motion are derived from the same energy, 
a great deal of difficulty is removed in consideration of causes which 
produce certain results. We seem to find this in the great advances 
which we have made in the last few years in electrical knowledge, and 
jn the application of that knowledge to practical uses. So, too, the 
steadying influences of the law of evolution upon the “cell theory.” 
Regarding this theory the fact appears to be established that all living 
bodies are composed of a substance which is nearly alike in all — pro- 
toplasm. This composition, in the language of Huxley, is the physical 
basis of life ; and this substance resolved into minute cells, each cell 
having its own independent life makes up into the complex bodies of 
animals and plants, so that as regards the nature of the material 
of which animals and plants are composed there is little or no differ- 
ence, the real difference being in the arrangement, differentiation and 
development of the cell. Huxley says that all the “ physiological 
, activities of animals and plants — assimilation, secretion, excretion, 
motion, generation— are the expression of the activities of the cells 
considered as physiological units. Each individual among the higher 
animals and plants is a synthesis of millions of subordinate individual- 
ities. With this brief and somewhat imperfect statement it may be 
seen that if men could master the nature, structure and metamorphosis 
of the nucleus of the cell he would stand, at least, on the very verge of 
the knowledge of the origin or principle of life. How far can he go ? 
It was made a charge against Faraday that he believed electricity was 
life. There seems to be no good ground for this statement. One of his 
biographers declares that it may be doubted if Faraday ever tried to form 
a definite idea of the relation in which the physical forces stand to the 
Supreme Intelligence ; but another states that on more than one occa- 
