igz Animal Automatism * [April, 
matter, on which Bichat lays so much stress, does not exist. 
In Nature nothing is at rest, nothing is amorphous; the 
simplest particle of that which men in their blindness are 
pleased to call * brute matter ’ is a vast aggregate of mole- 
cular mechanisms performing complicated movements of 
immense rapidity, and sensitively adjusting themselves to 
every change in the surrounding world. Living matter 
differs from other matter in degree, and not in kind ; the 
microcosm repeats the macrocosm ; and one chain of causa- 
tion connects the nebulous original of suns and planetary 
systems with the protoplasmic foundation of life and organi- 
sation.” * We have, then, a substance to which all known 
manifestations of cosmic and vital energy can be traced, and 
beyond which we can never penetrate. No independent 
principle of life is needed to vivify what is already vital ; no 
basis of mind is necessary save that cerebral tissue which 
originates and conditions the faCts of consciousness. We 
may say, in the pregnant words quoted by our author from 
Descartes, “ So far as these [functions of mind and body] 
are concerned, it is not necessary to conceive any other ve- 
getative or sensitive soul, nor any other principle of motion 
or of life, than the blood and the spirits agitated by the fire 
which burns continually in the heart, and which is nowise 
essentially different from all the fires which exist in inani- 
mate bodies.” The minor physiological inaccuracies of this 
sentence in no way detract from its fundamental truth. 
In taking leave of this very instructive volume, we may, 
in the same breath, justify its author and the “ common- 
sense philosopher ” whom he so sternly rebukes. Far from 
cavilling at Reid’s maxim, that “ it is genius, and not the 
want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error 
and false theory,” we gladly welcome it, as accounting, in a 
pleasing and rational matter, for certain deviations from 
sound sense and logical reasoning which we discover even 
in the writings of so distinguished a savant as Professor 
Huxley. 
C. N. 
Note. — As further evidence that the philosophic and sci- 
entific Materialism advocated in the above article is ratified 
by contemporary Medicine, let me be allowed to quote the 
following extradt from a “ Defence of Vivisection,” by Sir 
William W. Gull, in the current (February) number of the 
“ Nineteenth Century.” At page 457 that high practical 
authority writes — “ Until to-day the theory that the living 
* Science and Culture, p. 347. 
