organic operations. Thus vitality appears to be out of the 
reach of material combinations ; it controls them , and is conse- 
quently a power superior to them. Grant the wild supposition 
that life is eventually produced from inorganic elements, will 
that show us what those elements can perform ? I do not 
quite see it. The only fact adduced would be that life was 
there ; not that the unaided physical could bring it forth. 
You, as a living machine, are putting together, of purpose, 
what you expect as a voluntary gift from dead machinery. 
If life sprang up under your manipulations, do you expect 
materiality to compete with intellect ? No matter what forces 
are bestowed on machinery, it requires extraneous power to 
set it going, and to keep it going*. 
Yet another point ; — can the mind of man conceive pro- 
gressive motion originating in matter ? Mr. Grove announces 
a great truth in saying, “ It is an irresistible inference from 
observed phenomena that a force cannot originate otherwise 
than by devolution from some pre-existing force or forces.” 
This drives us out of the material world for the pre-existing 
force. Although Mr. Grove starts by setting down motion 
as a force, he is inclined to believe, and on very strong 
grounds, that physical forces are but modes of motion. I 
also believe that motion is a result of those affections of nature 
we call forces ; and the forces, themselves, derivative motion. 
Since, then, motion does not originate in matter, as a distinct 
motor — as all known forces devolve from anterior force — and 
since we cannot comprehend other origin for them, we cannot 
seek for the pre-existing force among natural phenomena. 
It can only be — as the inevitable consequence of this inquiry 
— a force foreign to the inorganic ; a power above and beyond 
all natural forces. 
In his address to the British Association in 1866 on 
“ Continuity,” Mr. Grove, speaking of an elephant arriving 
on earth, without having had antecedent progenitors, says, 
" I know of no scientific writer who has, since the disco- 
veries of geology have become familiar, ventured to present 
in intelligible terms any definite notion of how such an event 
could have occurred : those who do not adopt some view of 
continuity are content to say, God willed it.” Can our 
philosophy or our science lead us over the boundary of 
the physical ? On that boundary, we are tottering on the 
outermost edge of philosophy's teaching : one step more, and 
we are in that beyond, which science cannot penetrate. This 
seems to be a chief reason why some contend for the supre- 
macy of matter. They would bring everything within the 
compass of human reason ; so they trammel the intellectual ; 
