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be proved^ as declared in many scientific dictatorial utterances, 
tliat tlie difference is molecular, mecfianical, or cliemical in 
its nature, tlien must things living be included in the same 
category as non-living matter. The living and non-living in 
that case will truly be one; then would be established the 
much longed-for Unity; then would materialism rest on an 
intelligible basis, and constitute the foundation of a popular 
if not a progressive creed. 
But the science of our day has given no answer of the kind. 
On the contrary, all investigations so far carried out lead to in- 
ferences of an opposite tendency. So far from the gradations 
asserted to exist having been proved, not a vestige of anything 
tending towards proof has been discovered. No difference in 
kind so consummate, no divergence in property so wide or so 
absolute, can be pointed out in nature, as the difference which 
subsists between a minute particle of matter in the living and 
the same in the dead state. The difference remains to this 
day as irreconcilable, inestimable, absolute, in every sense 
as it ever was; while there is no reason to suppose the 
difference will be less in time to come. 
Now, let me ask you to consider for a moment the move- 
ments which affect every form of living matter while it is alive, 
which cease with its death never to recur, and which are 
absolutely different from any movements of non-living matter 
which are known. In many instances so active are these 
movements that they can be seen and studied under the 
microscope by any one who chooses to take a little trouble. 
Although the observer may not be a trained microscopist, he 
will see enough to satisfy him that the movements are not like 
those of any ordinary matter. It is true that movement occurs 
in all kinds of matter non-living as well as living, but the 
movements of the molecules of non-living matter are one 
thing, those of living matter another thing altogether. The 
former belong to matter as matter, and occur in the particles 
whether alive or dead. The latter continue only as long as 
life lasts. It has been authoritatively declared that living 
movements differ from non-living movements in degree only, 
and not in kind. But any one who studies the movements of 
living matter soon becomes convinced that they are different 
in kind from any non-living movements, inasmuch as they 
begin and cease under circumstances which would not affect 
the movements of non-living matter, while the very matter 
which exhibits the living movements will exhibit non-living 
movements after it has ceased to live. The materialistic doc- 
trine of life, instead of resting upon facts of observation and 
experiment, rests upon assumptions of the most extravagant 
