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fact, the doctrine of the ancient warrior and philosopher 
already quoted is reproduced and accepted “ Of all the ten 
thousand things that are, there is no particular one.” 
15. Bearing in mind the character of the several types of 
materialistic theories I have attempted to summarise in the 
preceding remarks, I endeavour to picture to myself a being 
such as a scientific Frankenstein, operating in accordance with 
those theories, would produce; and this is the fancy portrait that 
presents itself before me : — Its body sidereal and material ; its 
warmth maintained by sulphur; its blood mercury; in its 
stomach a demon ; intellect, veneration, truth, affection, sense 
of duty, benevolence, pity, conscience, honour, nowhere ; 
its companions, like its own “ sidereal ” elements, phantoms 
such as dance on walls at dead of night around the beds 
of men delirious ; its life, changes of place of particles of 
matter, produced by co-ordinate machinery formed of cells, 
and kept in action by “aldehyde groups derived from primary 
alcohols;” its death, the transformation of such groups into 
amyl-diethyl-benzene, amyl-methyl-benzene, et cetera. I refuse 
to accept such solution of the incomprehensible. If this be 
really what comes to us as the revelation of modern advanced 
science, so-called, I decline to accept it, as being by its nature 
as described, self-contradictory, and repugnant alike to my 
intellectual and to my moral sense. 
16. The purport and object of my remarks require that I for 
a little retrace my steps to a date already alluded to. Soon after 
the date of Paracelsus a new theory of the phenomena of life 
was promulgated, namely, that by Descartes. The chief points 
of that philosophy are well known ; yet, inasmuch as in times 
quite recent they have re-acquired a measure of acceptance 
dangerous to true philosophy, and indeed to public ethics, it 
is well to recapitulate some of them, and at the same time to 
take into account the kind of man by whom they were pro- 
mulgated. With regard, then, to Descartes and his theories, 
we learn that, born in 1596, he died in 1650; that early in 
life he began to distrust the authority of tradition and of his 
teachers. It is stated of him that he was a type of that self- 
reliant, harsh, and abstract spirit of science to which erudition 
and all the heritage of the past seem but elegant and unworthy 
trifling. His science was physics in all its branches, but 
especially as applied to physiology. His dissections of the 
heads of animals were conducted in order to explain imagina- 
tion and memory, both of which he considered physical 
processes. Another object of his researches was to find out 
“ if there is any means of getting a medical theory based on 
infallible demonstrations.” “The sciences,” said he, “in 
