standing the lively and vigorous handling which they have had, are far from being settled. Exact experiment can alone put an end to this dispute: the one conclusive experiment, indeed, in proof of the origin of living from dead matter, will be to make life. Meanwhile, as the subject is still in the region of discussion, it is permissible to set forth the reflections which the facts seem to warrant, and to endeavor to indicate the direction of scientific development which seems to be foretokened by, or to exist potentially in, the knowledge which we have thus far acquired. This much may be said: that those who oppose the doctrine of so-called spontaneous generation, not on the ground of the absence of conclusive evidence of its occurrence, which they might justly do, but on the ground of what they consider special characteristics of living matter, would do well to look with more insight into the phenomena of non-living Nature, and to consider more deeply what they see, in order to discover whether the characteristic properties of life are quite so special and exclusive as they imagine them to be. Having done that, they might go on to consider whether, even if their premises were granted, any conclusion regarding the mode of origin of life would legitimately follow; whether in fact it would not be entirely gratuitous and unwarrantable to conclude thence the impossibility of the origin of living matter from non-living matter. The etymological im port of the words physics and physiology is notably the same; and it may be that, as has been suggested, in the difference of their application lies a hidden irony at the assumption on which the division is grounded. 9, HANOVER SQUARE, W. PART I. LECTURES. BODY AND MIND: I.-ON THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF MENTAL FUNC- II.-ON CERTAIN FORMS OF DEGENERACY OF MIND, III.-ON THE RELATIONS OF MORBID BODILY STATES IV.-CONSCIENCE AND ORGANIZATION. |