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this metaphorical utterance is thought over, the more difficult 
does it seem to be to get any definite meaning out of it. 
What particular minute living thing or microcosm is in the 
least degree like the world, or like the universe ? In what 
respects, for instance, does a monad or an amasba resemble the 
world ? Surely it is time that people of intelligence should 
really consider what is gained by vague utterances like the 
above. We have had during the last fifteen or twenty years 
no end of materialistic suggestions, prophecies, and pro- 
mises, but little besides incoherence and inaccuracy have as 
yet been established. One wonders what the representatives 
of medical science of all nations thought when they were 
assured that the microcosm repeats the macrocosm, and 
what meaning was attributed to these words by those who 
heard them. 
The word like has been very curiously employed by 
many physical authorities, and, strange to say, in many 
assertions to which I could point, unlike would be nearer 
to the exact truth, as, for example, in the following dicta, 
unlike ought to be substituted for like : — Man is like a 
machine j man is like a monkey ; living matter is like white 
of egg ; a living thing is like a watch, and a windmill, and a 
hydraulic apparatus ; the body is like an army. Now, if any 
one will point out the respects in which these things are alike, 
I have no doubt some one will be found who will point out in 
what respects they are unlike, and then the public will be able 
to decide which of the two words, like or unlike, is more correct. 
Vital phenomena,^^ says Professor Huxley, “like {!) all 
other phenomena of the iihysical (!) world, are resolvable 
into matter and motion. Here, as in many other cases. 
Professor Huxley begs the question. The assertion that 
vital phenomena belong to the physical world is noj; to be 
justified by demonstrated facts. No purely physical pheno- 
mena are like any purely vital phenomena. How can vital 
action be of the physical world when it appears and dis- 
appears, while the matter with its physical properties still 
remains ? Between the motion of the particles of living 
matter and the motion of particles of non-living matter 
there is all the difi'erence imaginable — an essential, an abso- 
lute, an irreconcilable difference. Materialists, of course, 
assume and assert the contrary ; but, instead of wasting time 
by assertions, why do they not adduce an example of move- 
ments occurring in some form of non-living matter exactly 
resembling those which occur in living matter ? Much of our 
scientific teaching is now intensely and ridiculously dicta- 
torial. Instead of persuading people to consider and admire 
