318 The Border-land of Chemistry and Biology, ["June, 
Every medical practitioner aCts on the material theory of 
mind, just as every Evolutionist implicitly asserts it. The 
Darwinian and any other modern theory of Evolution must 
be essentially materialistic, since the continuity of the chain 
of life, from yeast-cell to man, leaves no point where we can 
assume the intervention of a spiritual entity, modifying or 
“ inspiring ” the physical organisms. That the bee has a 
soul denied to the flower on which it feeds, that man has a 
spirit to which his dog can lay no claim, cannot logically 
enter into the “ scientific imagination ” of our age. 
I must here venture to protest against Mr. Barker’s 
assumption that the “ initiation of the living state in the 
lifeless, whether it has formerly been alive or not, must be 
due to the adtion of an unseen higher power.” As at pre- 
sent observable, such initiation is a process controlled or 
regulated by ordinary material conditions, though these are 
too complex to be formulated into definite laws. In what 
manner the “vis insita” of matter may have manifested 
itself under palaeontological conditions it is impossible to 
determine. It is likewise impossible to affirm or deny the 
existence of a Supreme Intelligence or Pantheos ; but such 
a conception is plainly inconsistent with Dualism, and can 
only be founded on the sublime Hylozoistic conception of 
the. Universe. Man has created God in his own image ; but 
he cannot conceive his Deity to be all in all, and truly 
omnipresent, until he has recognised the sentient and non- 
sentient Cosmos as an indivisible and homogeneous unity. 
C. N. 
II. THE BORDER-LAND OF CHEMISTRY 
AND BIOLOGY. 
g*-*. . . 
t T has become an almost trite saying that just as im- 
portant minerals are most readily discovered along the 
meeting-line of different geological formations, and as 
animal species are most numerous along the edge of the 
forest or of the river, so the most interesting results are 
often obtained along what may be called the boundary of 
two sciences. Of this truth a striking instance is afforded 
by the researches of Dr. James Blake. This experimentalist 
has for forty years been engaged with the study of a class of 
