beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, _de
novo_? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly
allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied
to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to
provoke both incredulity and derision.

The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.

But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
only a negative conclusion shall follow.