242 
ment the results of infinite constructive power, worthy of a philosophy 
hereafter to be distinguished, for physical revelations supposed to be about 
to be made, and its rejection of the theistic idea ? 
Much confusion has resulted from the acceptance of fallacies concerning the 
nature of the changes in living matter, and the dictum, not proved nor at 
this time provable, that the living and the non-living are one, governed by 
the same laws and due to the same cause. The chasm between the living 
and the non-living has not been bridged, and it cannot be bridged by idle 
assertions to the contrary and speculations about cosmic vapour, however 
desirous the public may be that the operation of bridging should be accom- 
plished. The form of Materialistic doctrine now popular neither accounts for 
any single operation peculiar to living matter, nor helps us to understand the 
nature of any one. Nothing whatever, I fear, has been added by physical 
science to our*knowledge of the real nature of the marvellous change which 
occurs when a material atom passes from the non-living to the living state, 
and becomes an integral part of the very simplest or lowest living matter in 
existence. The nature of this change, which is unquestionably different in 
its essential nature from any known physical change, has not yet been 
elucidated, though it has been over and over again declared tliat it is 
physical. In spite of all the confident utterances, no one has been able to 
explain, in terms known to ])hysical science, any one of the phenomena 
occurring during any moment of the existence of the simplest living form 
in nature. The pretended physical explanations of growth, of the taking 
up of non-living matter and its conversion into living matter, the formation 
of structures, of organs, of parts made for a purpose, are utterly inadequate, 
while some are puerile, and would be dissipated by five minutes’ careful 
consideration on the part of any one who has the requisite knowledge of 
the facts, as far as they are now known. Many of the statements about 
life and living matter will not stand the criticism of an intelligent critic, 
Avho, though knowing little or nothing of science, will take the trouble to 
find out the meaning of the words and the sense in which they are used, in 
order that he may detect cases in which words are inappropriate, and 
instances in which the same word is used in very difterent senses perhaps 
in the same page, as, for example, occurs in the use of the word “ Proto- 
plasm,” which does duty for living matter, as well as for matter in the 
opposite or non-living state. If we could trace the atoms of matter through 
all their changes, until at last they lived, we should understand the nature 
of life, we should be able to lay down the laws by which vital phenomena 
are governed, we should understand the changes in our own bodies, we 
should know ourselves as well as the matter of which our bodies are com- 
posed. But in this case we should have spanned the infinite, solved all 
problems, explained all the mysteries, overcome the theistic idea, and man 
would have become a different being, and would find himself in a new 
position in nature. 
But the changes which take place in the atoms as they flit from non-living 
to living are still unknown, and the probability of our ever knowing their 
