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have put on our theological war-paint in order to fight these scientific gentle- 
men step by step, to meet their arguments by our arguments ; and to show 
them that there is not in their views — at least so far as the views of Dr. 
Odling and Professor Huxley are concerned — that there is not one single fact 
brought forward to prove that there is no such thing as life, or that there is 
not a power in organic nature which is not to be found in inorganic nature. 
Man has the greatest manifestation of God’s power in his own body — mani- 
festations which altogether transcend his intellect. No man could make his 
own eye, or his own heart, or his own nervous system. The whole of the 
vital actions of man’s body depend on a higher wisdom than he possesses. 
But man has something else totally and entirely distinct from all this vital 
power and force. This vital power and force he possesses in common with 
the plant and with the animal. But his higher mental powers and reason are 
totally and entirely distinct from his vital powers, though they may be bound 
up with them ; and they have been given to him by his Creator, as the sign 
and mark of his having been created in the image of that Creator, 
(Applause.) 
Mr. Brooke. — May I be allowed to say one word to supplement our 
Chairman’s excellent illustration of the egg as an evidence of the existence 
of vitality ? There is, on the surface of the yolk of the egg, a small micro- 
scopic speck, which is really the germinating spot from which the future 
chicken is evolved. Now, if you could only remove that speck from the egg, 
the egg might be sat upon until Doomsday, but it would never produce a 
chicken. There is a mass of protoplasm still left for the nourishment of the 
chicken during development, and that mass of protoplasm, if we eat it our- 
selves, will be assimilated by us and enter into our composition ; but to 
produce a chicken, it is necessary that the little germinal spot should be 
there. That is the seat of vitality ; and by vitality we mean the power of 
originating life, and generating a living organism out of the proper and con- 
venient materials. In the same way, take a walnut, and plant in the earth 
under favourable circumstances, and a walnut-tree will spring from it. But 
if you remove from one end of the walnut a little particle of protoplasm which 
you find lying there, and which is the vital germ, if you make a little hole 
and scoop that out, you may then plant the walnut, but you will never get a 
walnut-tree from it. The vitality is not distributed indiscriminately over 
the whole walnut ; it is in that one little particle ; and if that particle be 
removed, there is no longer any power in the nut to reproduce its kind. The 
vitality is in that one little germ, and if that germ be removed, the mass of 
protoplasm which is left is incapable of producing its kind. That protoplasm 
is only capable of nourishing the little germ during the early period of 
existence, or of nourishing ourselves, if we eat it. Vitality does not exist in 
the mass of protoplasm, but only in the germ. (Hear, hear.) 
The Chairman. — Let me supplement this again. When we refer to this 
little germ, let us see what modern hypothesis would have us conceive as 
existing in it. Let us apply it to that little germ of the egg. The pangenesis 
theory of Mr. Darwin would have us believe that there exist in that minute 
