2 Life and its Basis . [January, 
and physical stimuli produce on it ; but the question, What 
is life ? remains without any satisfactory answer. 
Few, if any, of the definitions of life are more than an 
enunciation of some of the principal phenomena presented 
by living beings. They may be very true as accounts 
of the actings of life, but they tell us nothing as to its nature. 
These phenomena are effects, but what is their cause ? The 
conviction is irresistible that there is something — a quicquid 
ignotum — behind them, which is beyond our ken. And so, no 
doubt, there is. 
But, after all, is Life a thing at all ? Is it a distinct entity , 
which can be properly said to be attached or added to, or 
taken from, matter ? In conventional language, life may 
be said to dwell in an organism, or to depart or be taken 
from it. But it does not follow that this is philosophically 
correCt in respeCt of either of the great provinces of life. 
And the main objeCt of the present article will be to show 
that there is good ground for thinking that the vital prin- 
ciple, in our own world at least, is not a separate entity, 
such as Mind and Matter are ; nor yet molecular motion in 
matter, as some will have it to be, but a temporary state of 
certain kinds of matter, which is produced and regulated in 
them by “ mind.” 
In an enquiry of this nature precision in the use of terms 
is of essential importance. When this is negleCted the 
reader is often left in a mental fog, the word “life ” being 
sometimes used for its “ principle,” sometimes for its attri- 
butes or phenomena ; and again, for its duration, or still 
more frequently, for the whole series of living things around 
us. I shall endeavour to avoid this confusion of thought, 
and to restrict the word to the first of these meanings, viz., 
the principle which distinguishes (to use Prof. Haeckel’s 
phraseology) the organa from the anorgana. 
I may further observe, in limine, that many physiologists 
speak of this principle as a force or power controlling, to a 
certain extent, the physical forces of Nature. This, which 
is quite true phenomenally, seems necessarily to imply that 
they regard it as a being possessing power and intelligence, 
and exerting volition. Another school of physicists, taking 
note of the perpetual motion manifested in the minutest 
molecules which can be discerned in animal and vegetable* 
cells, are disposed to identify the causes, of these living 
motions with those of the motions exhibited in inorganic 
* I should prefer myself to adopt Henslow’s terminology, “ vegetal,” when 
used as an adjettive, on etymological grounds, but conform here to the common 
usage. 
