controlled by mind, — it has, as it Avere, a soul within it." ^ This illustration holds just so far as it was intended to hold. The intel- lect which controls the engine is not in it, nor is it affected hj its chanoes. Nevertheless, in the body, as well as in the engine, the controlling intellect is equally distinct from the physical force, which both so wonderfully exhibit.
In more direct reference to vitality, Professor Henry says : " Vi- tality gives startling evidence of the immediate presence of a di- rect, divine, and spiritual essence, operating with the ordinary forces of nature, but being in itself entirely distinct from them. This view of the subject is absolutely necessary in carrying out the me- chanical theory of the equivalency of heat and the correlation of the ordinary physical forces. Among the latter vitality has no place, and knows no subjection to the laws by which they are gov- ei'ned." '^
Dr. Beale.
Dr. Beale ^ is equally explicit. He constantly insists that what acts voluntarily, with choice to accomplish an end, cannot be phys- ical ; and that in vital and mental operations there is unquestion- able evidence of such voluntary action. He says, " I regard ' vitality ' as a power of a peculiar kind, exhibiting no analogy whatever to any known forces. It cannot be a property of matter, because it is in all respects essentially different in its actions from all acknowledged properties of matter. The vital property belongs to a different category altogether." * He argues also to prove that organization cannot be referred to physical force. " It cannot be maintained that the atoms arrange themselves, and devise what po- sitions each is to take up, — and it would be yet more extravagant to attribute to ordinary force or energy, atomic rule and directive agency. We might as well try to make ourselves believe that the laboratory fire made and lighted itself, that the chemical com- pounds put themselves into the crucible, and the solutions betook themselves to the beakers in the proper order, and in the exact pro- portions required to form certain definite compounds. But while all will agree that it is absurd to ignore the chemist in the labora- tory, many insist upon ignoring the presence of anything repre- senting the chemist in the living matter which they call the ' cell- laboratory.' In the one case the chemist works and guides, but in
1 Papfir in the Agricultural Report, 1854-1855, p. 448. 2 Page 441.
« Protoplasm ; or Life, Matter, and Mind. By Lionel S. Beale, 51. B., F. R. S. Second Edition. London, J. Churchill & Sons, 1870. Dr. Beale is an authority in the department of Physiolog}'. His book, How to work with the Microscope, has reached a fourth editioo.
* Page 103.
294 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. m.— Anti-Theism.
the other, it is maintained, the lifeless molecules of matter are themselves the active agents in developing vital phenomena. . . . No one has proved, and no one can prove, that mind and life are
in any way related to chemistry and mechanics Neither
can it be said that life works with physical and chemical forces, for there is no evidence that this is so. On the other hand it is quite certain that life overcomes, in some very remarkable and unknown manner, the influence of physical forces and chemical affinities." ^ On a former page he had said, " In order to convince people that the actions of living beings are not due to any mysterious vitality or vital force or power, but are in fact physical and chemical in their nature, Professor Huxley gives to matter whicli is alive, to matter which is dead, and to matter which is completely changed by roasting or boihng, the very same name. The matter of sheep and mutton and man and lobster and egg is the same, and, accord- ing to Huxley, one may be transubstantiated into the other. But how ? By ' subtle influences,' and ' under sundry circumstances,' answers this authority. And all these things alive, or dead, or roasted, he tells us are made of protoplasm, and this protoplasm is the physical basis of life, or the basis of physical life. But can this discoverer of ' subtle influences ' afford to sneer at the fiction of vitality ? By calling things which differ from one another in many qualities by the same name, Huxley seems to think he can annihi- late distinctions, enforce identity, and sweep away the difficulties which have impeded the progress of previous philosophers in their search after unity. Plants, and worms, and men are all proto- plasm, and protoplasm is albuminous matter, and albuminous mat- ter consists of four elements, and these four elements possess cer- tain properties, by which properties all differences between plants, and worms, and men, ai'e to be accounted for. Although Huxley would probably admit that a worm was not a man, he would tell us that by ' subtle influences ' the one thing might be easily con- verted into the other, and not by such nonsensical fictions as ' vi- tality,' which can neither be weighed, measured, nor conceived." ^ In the latter portion of his book Dr. Beale shows that the brain is not a gland to secrete thought as the liver does bile ; nor is thought a function of the brain, nor the result of mechanical or chemical action ; nor is the brain a voltaic battery giving shocks of thought, as Stuart Mill conjectures ; but it is the organ of the mind, not for generating, but for expressing thought.
1 Protoplasm, etc., pp. 116, 117. 2 2bid. p. 16.