LIFE PHENOMENA : SOME NOTES ON NITELLA, ETC. Ill 
and life must ever first act upon matter before matter can 
take part in life. Surely, you will not give adherence to 
<f the all sufficient potency” of inorganic matter and inor¬ 
ganic force! Surely, you will not now see in dull dead 
dust a the promise and potency of all life,” and accept 
these with blinded implicitness as your only creators of all 
nature’s worthiest products. Then, if you do not accept 
these as your creative agencies you must reject the “ modern 
tendencies of thought,” and accept another agency as being 
required, and which we believe to be neither physical nor 
chemical, and which can have no co-relations with these, 
but which we believe is infinitely superior, governing, and 
guiding, and controlling these, and whose mysterious innate 
power, although still lying hidden from our view (so far as 
modern scientific research has yet favoured us), is yet ever 
recognisable in those actions and results which are clearly 
to be seen around us in all those wonderful and mysterious 
animal and vegetable life phenomena. 
I am fully alive to the fact that these views may not be 
accepted by those who have already given their implicit 
adherence to so-called “ modern advanced thought,” and 
I am also fully aware that they will be accepted by such as 
exceedingly antiquated views, and that their exponent must 
be lagging far behind (C the scientific spirit of the age.” 
But I am, nevertheless, fully alive to this other fact, that 
the acceptance of a mysterious, hidden, secret power—a 
something superior to dull, unintelligent, inorganic dust—• 
as the accomplisher of all vital phenomena, is in complete 
accordance with the views of a very goodly host of emi¬ 
nently truthful scientific observers. And until we have 
given to us as taking the place of flighty, ever-changing 
hypothesis, theory, and speculative philosophic conception, 
I say, never, never let us be tied into acceptance of such 
views as these, which are verily and in truth crushing 
the very brain and heart alive of all science and all 
theology. And let me ask you, in conclusion, still to hold 
that we are acting more in accordance with reason and real 
truthful scientific spirit if we accept belief in what we see 
to be an indisputable necessity, and in what we feel confi¬ 
dent must have an existence— <<r belief in a power which is 
eminently superior to any known physical or chemical force 
with which we are acquainted.” 
These remarks, I fear, have been enlarged to far too great 
a length, but the subject is one which cannot well be ex¬ 
hausted, and on this ground I may seek a pardon ; and, in 
hurriedly concluding, I may be permitted to state, that 
