or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
of molecules.

Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."

And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the