20o 
But few of those, who are carried along by the materialistic 
stream, have troubled to think over the remarkable tenets to 
which they have given their assent. They receive with a 
faith, called robust, which seems so blind and unreasoning as 
to border on credulity, dogmatic and dictatorial conjectures 
of the most extravagant kind, convinced, but not by reason, 
that the authors of them could not be mistaken in the views 
they advanced with such positive and undoubting emphasis. 
The reception of materialistic dogmas by any intelligent 
person who takes the trouble to think over their terms, and 
is capable of appreciating, and analysing, and examining the 
evidence upon which they are supposed to rest, is simply 
impossible; and the applause with which these views have 
been received in some quarters is to be accounted for by the 
decline of thought, and the indisposition on the part of the 
public to trouble to think at all on the merits of the arguments 
presented to them. Is there one acquainted with the powers 
and actions, and results of living, of any form of living matter, 
who will declare that he believes the doctrine that non-living 
matter alone is the source of all life, and will state the 
grounds of his belief ? 
Bear in mind that no state of matter known, no mere 
chemical combinations, no mechanical contrivances, no 
machinery ever made, can be caused to exhibit phenomena 
resembling in any really essential particular those which are 
characteristic of every form of living matter that exists in 
nature, and which, we must infer, have characterised every 
particle that has ever existed since the first appearance of 
primitive life on the earth. 
Neither can any known form or mode of ordinary energy 
construct or form, direct, control, or regulate. Nevertheless, 
it is taught far and wide that vital actions are due to the 
energy which belongs to ordinary matter, and that, therefore, 
vital action is but a modified form of ordinary physical or 
physico-chemical action. Yital action, it is said, differs in 
degree only from actions which occur in the non-living world. 
As regards the nature of that remarkable process of growth 
which takes place in all things living we find great diversity 
of opinion. Some, indeed, maintain that growth is not a vital 
process at all, but that it essentially consists of the aggrega- 
tion of particles of matter ; nevertheless, no one who regards 
growth as a physical operation has appealed to any definite 
case of growth to show that the intimate changes which occur 
are really of the character he asserts. The growth of a leaf, 
for example, seems to be very widely removed from the mere 
aggregation of particles of matter. 
