i88i.] 
Hylozoic Materialism . 
H7 
and destroys. Life waxes or wanes as this non-incandescent 
fire burns with more or less activity, and ceases with its 
extinction. Its feebleness in old age causes a corresponding 
decline in keenness of sense and intellect, and in strength of 
character ; for chemical conditions exercise the same control 
over moral and mental powers as over those which we have 
been accustomed to distinguish as purely physical. The 
function is uniform, the product diverse ; for secretion, in all 
its forms, muscular motion and consciousness are but dif- 
ferent results of the same invisible antecedent process, which 
alone sustains and vivifies “ body, soul, and mind.” Thus 
the “cellular vitality” is really identical with that of the 
conscious brain, and the living corpuscle perfectly typifies 
the living organism, of which it is a microscopic constituent. 
The relation is that of Microcosm and Macrocosm. This 
faCt disposes at once of the distinction between that “ cor- 
puscular life ” which is common to animals and plants, and 
the “anima” which a consistent dualist must believe to 
reside in the lowest form of organised matter capable of 
sensation and volition.* The first dawn of consciousness is 
not more easy of explanation than the subtlest processes of 
human thought, and both must evidently be traced to the 
same origin, viz., to the inherent energy of matter, mani- 
festing itself in more or less complex organisms. To regard 
sensation as proceeding from a super-material essence — a 
donum divinum superadded to organisation — rather than 
from that physical development of nerve tissue with which 
it is invariably associated, is to prefer hypothesis to thesis, 
fable to faCt. 
It must be difficult, even for the most ardent dualist, to 
believe that, although the mental and moral faculties may 
appear to be irretrievably impaired by a serious injury to the 
cerebral hemisphere, the soul yet remains intaCt, and will be 
restored to more than pristine vigour by the final destruction 
of that corporeal mechanism whose partial disintegration 
has already paralysed will, emotion, and thought. 
* The so-called process of “ assimilation ” carried out by plants is, of course, 
the diredt reverse of animal respiration ; yet in both cases vitality is sustained 
by a chemical process ; and it must not be forgotten that vegetables also respire, 
and that, although they absorb oxygen in relatively small quantities, it is not 
less necessary to their life than to that of animals. Perhaps I may be excused 
for referring here to at statement in Mr. Barker’s article, which I cannot but 
suppose must have been inserted by some inadvertence. He asserts that, while 
animal forms of protoplasm comprise all four of the elements, — carbon, hy- 
drogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, — “ vegetables, with a few exceptions, contain 
only the first three.” It is a fadt well known, not only to the botanical che- 
mist, but to the pradtical agriculturist, that vegetable protoplasm invariably 
contains nitrogen, and that crops will not thrive if the soil be deficient in 
nitrogenous substances. 
