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being produced therefrom ; while no one has as yet shown that the living 
must issue from the non-living. As far as I know, there is absolutely no 
reason for coming to the conclusion that the non-living has evolved the 
living. That the living have existed is a fact that has yet to be explained 
in a manner differing from that in which the existence of the non-living can 
be established. Therefore, I hold that no one has shown that life, *in its 
lowest conceivable form — not even the life of the Bacterium — has anything 
to do with physics. (Applause.) 
Dr. Wallich (a Visitor). — There is one point in the present discussion 
upon which I should wish to offer a few observations, inasmuch as it relates 
to a branch of natural history to which I have devoted special attention. 
It has been alleged by certain eminent biologists, that distinct evidence of 
Life having originated on our globe by what has been termed “ Spontaneous 
Generation” is derivable from a study of the lowest organic forms ; and, as 
is well known, modern Materialism rests absolutely on this assumed founda- 
tion. Speaking, as I am able to do, from a personal study of these forms 
extending over thirty years, I can unhesitatingly affirm that the entire 
mass of evidence they furnish leads to a diametrically opposite con- 
clusion ; the marvellous manner in which their vital functions are carried 
on, in the absence of any appreciable organisation of a sufficiently 
elaborate kind to enable us to account for it, being of itself proof that 
life is something more than a mere occasional attribute of matter. I 
can, therefore, fully confirm what has been said by my friend Dr. Lionel 
Beale, that nothing has heretofore transpired which can furnish ground 
for the belief that Life is the result of physical action only. But it 
needs no special scientific education to bring this fact home to most of 
us. We know inanimate matter to be under the exclusive dominion of 
molecular and chemical forces, the interactions of which can be predicated 
with tolerable certainty, because they remain invariable so long as the 
attendant conditions continue unaltered. We also know that, in the case of 
animate matter, these interactions become temporarily subject to modifica- 
tions, the precise extent and nature of which we are unable to predicate 
otherwise than empirically and approximately. The physical laws which 
govern these forces are never abrogated, but they do not, for the time 
being, exercise the same unrestricted sway in the case of animate, that 
they exercise in the case of inanimate matter. And, going a step further 
— whether our experience be derived from the human frame or the 
humblest living unit in nature — we know but too surely that, as soon as 
the principle we call life departs from the clay of which it was a 
“ tenant-at-will,” the whole of the material forces instantaneously regain 
their sway and again reign supreme. Surely, then, no minds but those 
distorted under the pressure of a dominant hypothetical illusion can, for 
a single moment, fail to recognise the significance of such evidence. 
It is, for the most part, on the authority of Professor Haeckel that the 
doctrine of Evolution has been pushed to the extremes above referred to. 
He has gone the length of publishing as demonstrable facts a number of 
