31 
ment since its creation there is no record — with the. vast 
step in advance of giving birth to the wondrous world of 
the living ? I may go further ; Mr. Page says in his work 
on Man: — “No observation from the external world — no 
analogy, however plausible — no analysis, however minute — 
can solve the problem of an immaterial and immortal exist- 
ence; ” Exactly so. And though Mr. Page is an opponent 
of the views I am endeavouring to maintain, he has uttered 
a broad and indisputable truth. Since, then, immortality is 
the prolongation of life to endless duration, there is precisely 
the same impossibility, from the external world, to solve the 
problem of the first condition of immortality — life. As im- 
mortality cannot be without life — and as nothing like 
immortality can be made out of tbe inorganic — they who 
say at the same time that the inorganic can produce life, 
contradict themselves. Perhaps they can reconcile this. I 
confess I am too obtuse. I have already considered that it 
is physically impossible for the perishable to confer immor- 
tality ; and that it is consequently impracticable for life to 
have been the fortuitous offspring of merely natural forces. 
Does not even perpetual motion defy the skill of the highest 
organization on earth ? Yet insensate matter is called upon 
for perpetual life. Gras credo , as Dr. Jortin said of Swift's 
learning. 
To show the impossibility of chemistry being competent to 
effect the production of life, it is perfectly well known to 
chemists that there are peculiarities of composition in organic 
substance and structure, marking it off from the rest of creation 
by a deep and a wide valley, across which no human arm can 
throw a bridge. There are many elementary substances found 
in organic matter, the wkole of which are not, however, pre- 
sent in all organisms. The four principal do pervade all that 
is organic, hence commonly called organic elements; — they 
are oxygen, hydrogen, nitogen, and carbon. The presence of 
those in the organic is universal. They are also of the in- 
organic : and thus far, being common to both, why may not 
the one produce the other ? the lifeless, elaborate life ? The 
peculiarities of their distribution forbid it. The elements 
generally form a binary combination in minerals ; but in the 
organic world, at least three — usually four — of the elementary 
principles, enter into combination to form the proximate prin- 
ciple — to educe each, simplest substance. We have also, in 
the inorganic, the elements commonly united ir a simple ratio 
to one another; as 1 atom of the one kind to 1 or 2 or 3 of 
another; while in organic bodies there is no such uniformity; 
several volumes — ten or a dozen — of one, unite with some 
