philosopliical inquiry. Were their reason allowed to do so^ it 
would probably lead them towards a goal of a very different 
nature. It is^ indeed, strange that one of the chief means 
relied upon for the purpose of convincing people of the truth 
of materialism should be to institute comparisons between 
things which are alive and have gradually grown — from the in- 
finitesimal, transparent, structureless — into form and bulk, and 
lifeless machines which have been made in pieces and after- 
wards put together ; and to assure the public that these two 
utterly distinct things, living beings and machines — nay, 
machines made by man, and not capable of being produced in 
any other way — were very much alike, and belonged to the 
same category. It would be tedious were I to repeat the 
dictatorial utterances in argumentative form which have been 
published far and wide for the purpose of leading people to 
believe that a living thing was like a watch, or a steam-engine, 
or a hydraulic apparatus. Moreover, some of the comparisons 
have been voluntarily abandoned by their authors in favour of 
others even more absurd. Such tricks as calling a watch a 
creature, and a man a machine, are hardly likely to mislead 
even the most ignorant after they have withdrawn themselves 
from the bewitching influence of the persuasive eloquence of 
the materialist prophet, and have commenced to calmly think 
over his extraordinary utterances, in order to extract any 
meaning that may be hidden by the frothy metaphors of 
modern physico-vital conjecture. 
The very last comparison made for the purpose of helping 
people to understand the nature of a living thing is, I think 
you will say, the very worst and most inappropriate ever 
suggested — one that, as you will perceive, must be rejected, 
not only because it is quite inapplicable, but because the 
thing with which a living being is compared is so distorted 
and so changed that it is no longer what it has been called — 
nay, in the terms adopted it is not even conceivable by the 
imagination. This last thing which it has been said a living body 
is like is called an army, but, as I shall show you, some essen- 
tial characteristics of an army have been taken away, and some 
impossible characteristics arbitrarily added, which would 
reduce a hypothetical army to that which could no longer be 
correctly termed an army; and as some of the characters super- 
added are absolute impossibilities of nature, the whole com- 
parison comes to little more than incongruous, unintelligible 
metaphor, or incoherent rhapsody, which may amuse the 
fanciful and thoughtless, but which ought to be condemned, 
by all capable of thinking, as extravagant and misleading, 
and as likely to hasten the decadence of thought. 
