163 
ORDINARY MEETING, APRIL 5, 1869. 
The Rev. Walter Mitchell, M.A., Vice-President, 
in the Chair. 
The Minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed, and the following 
election was announced : — 
Member Rev. George Henslow, M.A., F.L.S., St. John’s Parsonage, 
St. John’s Wood, N.W. 
It was also announced that the following work had been presented to the 
Library : — 
“ The Laws of Vital Force in Health and Disease.” By E. Haughton, Esq., 
M.D., M.V.I. From the Author. 
The Secretary, in the absence of the Author, then read the following 
paper : — 
LIFE — BRIEF REMARKS ON ITS ORIGIN: BEING AN 
EXAMINATION OF SOME MODERN OPINIONS. 
By J. Hewitt Wheatley, Esq., F.G.S., F.L.S., fyc., 
Mem. Vid. Inst., Hon. Loc. Sec., Sligo. 
X T is a grave misfortune for science and philosophy, as well 
as for our highest interests, that even a section of the 
scientific — men both by nature and education of high attain- 
ments — should devote its best energies to materialistic studies, 
till it gives to the material the pre-eminence due to mind ; or 
so confuses the two together, as to get up a system which 
may bear the incongruous title of inorganic vitality. 
Unfortunately, names occasionally leap into sudden fame, 
as the heralds of some startling announcement, conceived with 
ability and delivered with eloquence. It is taken up by many 
who never reflect that its claim to originality, or to well- 
considered and carefully wrought out-theory, has no better 
authority than either the support of evidences they have 
themselves borrowed from very doubtful sources, or hasty 
generalization from unsound philosophy and unsettled science. 
