258 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
are originated. Possibly my position is one you, at present, on the 
spur of the moment, may hesitate to accept ; but I commend it 
to your consideration as one most reasonable." 
Leaving then the a 'priori disputants to ponder over the proba- 
bilities and improbabilities which each presents for the considera- 
tion of the other, we may now turn to notice the character of 
those antecedent conditions of things out of which it is said Life, 
in the first instance, emerged. I have already intimated that 
authorities are not agreed as to what these conditions were. 
The most pronounced and prominent authorities are those who 
regard the first life as simply and solely the result of the action of 
the pre-existing dead matter, and the physical forces acting in it. 
This school is often and truly called the " mechanical," because, 
according to the physical system they adhere to, all chemical 
forms and actions are, in the last analysis, supposed to be the 
outcome of one mechanically-acting force. The most explicit and 
most aggressive of the school is, perhaps, Buchner. His words 
admit of no two interpretations. He says, "The facts of physical 
science prove, with considerable certainty, that the organic beings 
which people the earth owe their origin and propagation solely to 
the conjoined action of natural forces and materials." 3 Again, 
"Whence came organic beings'? ... It is from the simplest 
organic elements produced in the way of Spontaneous Generation 
by the combination of inorganic elements." 4 And it should be 
observed that all forms and varieties of inorganic matter, according 
to Buchner, sprang from the mechanical interaction of the pri- 
mordial form of matter and force, so that Life is the resultant of 
all previous interactions. There are some evolutionists who are 
disposed to rest chiefly, if not entirely, on the general proof of 
evolution as being, in principle, sufficient to cover the question 
of Life — feeling sensible of the extreme difficulty of adducing 
anything like cogent positive proofs of an event so remote, and 
admitting frankly that Life itself is too subtle and structurally 
impenetrable for the highest human skill to explore and fully 
analyse. But there are bold men in science as well as in athletics, 
and so it has been attempted to furnish scientific data for the 
conclusion believed to be indicated by the principle of Continuity. 
Let us look at these data. 
The origin of Life is, it is thought, indicated by the unstable 
3 Force and Matter, p. 72. 4 Ibid. p. 82. 
