[14] The reader will understand that I speak, not of the “severe and diligent inquiry” of variation or of “fortuity,” but merely of the easy assumption that these phenomena are a sufficient basis on which to rest, with the all-powerful help of natural selection, a theory of definite and progressive evolution.
[15] Revue Philosophique. XXXIII, 1892.
[16] This general principle was clearly grasped by Dr George Rainey (a learned physician of St Bartholomew’s) many years ago, and expressed in such words as the following: “......it is illogical to suppose that in the case of vital organisms a distinct force exists to produce results perfectly within the reach of physical agencies, especially as in many instances no end could be attained were that the case, but that of opposing one force by another capable of effecting exactly the same purpose.” (On Artificial Calculi, Q.J.M.S. (Trans. Microsc. Soc.), VI, p. 49, 1858.) Cf. also Helmholtz, infra cit., p. 9.
[17] Whereby he incurred the reproach of Socrates, in the Phaedo.
[18] In a famous lecture (Conservation of Forces applied to Organic Nature, Proc. Roy. Instit., April 12, 1861), Helmholtz laid it down, as “the fundamental principle of physiology,” that “There may be other agents acting in the living body than those agents which act in the inorganic world; but those forces, as far as they cause chemical and mechanical influence in the body, must be quite of the same character as inorganic forces: in this at least, that their effects must be ruled by necessity, and must always be the same when acting in the same conditions; and so there cannot exist any arbitrary choice in the direction of their actions.” It would follow from this, that, like the other “physical” forces, they must be subject to mathematical analysis and deduction. Cf. also Dr T. Young’s Croonian Lecture On the Heart and Arteries, Phil. Trans. 1809, p. 1; Coll. Works, I, 511.
[19] Ektropismus, oder die physikalische Theorie des Lebens, Leipzig, 1910.
[20] Wilde Lecture, Nature, March 12, 1908; ibid. Sept. 6, 1900, p. 485; Aether and Matter, p. 288. Cf. also Lord Kelvin, Fortnightly Review, 1892, p. 313.
[21] Joly, The Abundance of Life, Proc. Roy. Dublin Soc. VII, 1890; and in Scientific Essays, etc. 1915, p. 60 et seq.
[22] Papillon, Histoire de la philosophie moderne, I, p. 300.
[23] With the special and important properties of colloidal matter we are, for the time being, not concerned.