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latter. Processes of aggregation may go on to all eternity 
without the occurrence of any change resembliug, or allied to, 
that of growth. Growth, after all, is but one of several purely 
vital phenomena. 
Surely it is the duty of all persons having any pretensions to 
culture, who esteem accuracy and truth, and desire to promote 
their diffusion, either to condemn the materialistic doctrine as 
scientifically untenable, or to insist that more accurate and 
adequate explanation of the facts and principles upon which 
it is based should be given by those who have unreservedly 
committed themselves to the universal application of this 
physical hypothesis of life, and that some reply should be 
made to the objections that have been raised to its general 
application to living things. 
I would draw attention to the declaration again and again 
repeated, and now taught even to children, that the living and 
the non-living differ only in degree, that the living has been 
evolved by degrees from the non-living, and that the latter 
passes by gradations towards the former state. No one has 
adduced any evidence in proof of these conclusions, which are, 
in fact, dictatorial assertions only, and no specimen of any 
kind of matter which is actually passing from the non-living 
to the living state, or which can be shown to establish any 
connexion between these absolutely different conditions of 
matter, has been, or can be at this time, brought forward. 
You will, I think, find that, in endeavouring to prove the 
reasonableness and strength of the doctrines they have espoused, 
the advocates of every form of materialism mainly rely upon 
the assumed applicability to matter that lives, of conclusions 
arrived at concerning the nature of the phenomena of non- 
living matter. But the fact. That this living matter, as is well 
known, is invariably derived from matter that already lived, is 
a serious difficulty which presents itself to the mind at the 
outset of the inquiry, and which, instead of receiving some 
explanation as regards its bearing upon physical views of life, 
is on account of its inconvenient tendency generally ignored. 
Materialism, indeed, rests upon this assumed intimate alliance 
and relationship between the living and non-living. But as 
soon as the knowledge of the peculiar and special nature of 
all vital actions shall be better known and more widely spread, 
and when people shall have learnt how absolutely the vital are 
marked off from purely physical and chemical actions, belief 
in materialism will be shaken, and this antiquated creed will 
then only retain the support of a few faithful adherents 
wedded to the old paths and ancient ways who have not heart 
to desert the old beliefs, evolved in the infancy of thought and 
