130 PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON 
much for Haeckel’s “ archigony.” Lionel Beale* publicly puts 
on record his conviction — a conviction resulting from forty years’ 
study, with the aid of microscopes of enormous power (5,000 
linear), of actual Living Matter or Bioplasm— that “Vital Power ” 
is “ distinct from all forces, potencies, and properties belonging 
to or derived from any kind, or resulting from any physical or 
chemical state, of Cosmic matter.” Beale tells us that 
“No matter in the Living State is subject to physical and chemical 
laws. The living constituents of living particles are even unin- 
fluenced by gravitation.” . . . “I have been unable,” he says, 
“ to discover or frame any hypothesis which could be advanced as a 
reasonable explanation of the facts of any kind of living matter, 
without admitting the influence of Infinite Power , Prevision, and 
Wisdom. All my efforts to obtain evidence which in reason could 
be regarded as adequate to account in some other way for the facts, 
have entirely failed.” 
Such is the testimony of an “ authority ” than whom it would 
be difficult to name one higher, or commanding more general 
respect. In his Address, before the British Association, on 
“ Stereochemistry and Vitalism,” F. K. Japp drew attention to 
the fact that the results of modern research preclude an 
explanation of the phenomena of life in terms of the mechanics 
of atoms. 
Life and Enantiomorphs. — He referred, in proof, to the 
remarkable and entirely unique action of living matter in 
regard to enantiomorphs (opposite hemihedral crystalline 
forms), — it produces, or selects, one kind of enantiomorphs 
without the other. Professor Japp showed that 
“ Living matter is constantly performing a certain geometrical feat 
which dead matter, unless, indeed, it happens to belong to a particular 
class of products of the living organism, and to be thus ultimately 
referable to living matter, is incapable — not even conceivably 
capable — of performing.” 
To this unique property of vitalism! may be added that of 
* See Address on “ The Nature of Life,” given before the Philosophical 
Society of Great Britain, 1899. 
t Of the optically active substances found in vegetable and animal 
tissues, Professor Japp remarks that “ no fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
even with all eternity for them to clash and combine in, could compass 
this feat of the formation of the first optically active organic compound.” 
Sir George Stokes has pointed out that Life is not known to us except as 
produced by the action of Spirit. Sir Oliver Lodge concurs (see Life and 
Matter). 
