This if true would convict nature of incongruity of action. If spontaneous in one or several instances, why not in all? If spontaneous in the production of the Protozoa, why not in the forms which proceed from the Protozoa? If living forms have their sole origin in the forces of nature, we have the right to look for uniformity in their production.

To avoid the force of this objection, he says: "The mind or Psyché of man developed together with, and as a function of the medullary tube, and just as even now the brain and spinal marrow develop in each human being from the simple medullary tube, so the 'human mind,' or the mental capacity of the whole human race, has developed gradually step by step from the mind of the lower vertebrates." (id. 451).

According to this the mind is simply a function of the medullary tube, instead of the latter being an organ by which the mind acts. This brings up the question mooted by Mr. Spencer, whether life precedes structure, or the reverse. Haeckel contends that those who oppose his views on the subject must suppose a period when the mind entered the brain.

Prof. Geo. W. Barker, in a paper read before the American Association, Sept. 4th, 1880, says: "Life is now universally regarded as a phenomenon of matter, and hence of course as having no separate existence." (41-1-113). If life has no separate existence aside from the material body,

is universally accepted is very wide of the truth. If he had said that life is only manifested to us through its material covering, he would have more closely expressed the general belief on the subject.

In addition to the various speculations as to the origin of Life, attempts have been made to distinctly define it.

Schelling said: "Life is the tendency to individuation." According to Richerard: "Life is a collection of phenomena which succeed each other during a limited time in an organized body." According to DeBlainville: "Life is the two-fold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at once general and continuous." As G. H. Lewes defines it: "Life is a series of definite and successive changes, both of structure and composition, which take place in an individual without destroying its identity." *

Herbert Spencer questions the correctness of these several definitions, and refers to an article in the Westminster Rev. for April, 1852, in which he formulates Life as "the co-ordination of actions." And says: "I still incline towards this definition as one answering to the facts with

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* The following in italics from Haeckel (3-1-335) will probably amuse, quite as much as instruct, the reader: "The peculiar "chemico-physical properties, and especially the semi-fluid state of aggregation, and the early decomposibility of the exceedingly com"posite albuminous combinations of carbon, are the mechanical causes of those peculiar phenomena of motion which distinguish organisms

tolerable precision." He further says in its favor: "It includes all organic changes alike in the viscera and the brain. It excludes the great mass of organic changes, which display little or no co-ordination. By making co-ordination the specific characteristic of vitality, it involves the truths, that the arrest of co-ordination is death, and that imperfect co-ordination is disease."

Yet he admits that like the other definitions, it includes too much; for it may be said of the solar system, with its regularly recurring movements, and its self-balancing perturbations, that it also exhibits co-ordination of actions." (5-1-60).

He then considers the definition of G. H. Lewes That part of it which states the persistence of a living organism as a whole, notwithstanding these changes, he regards as important. Yet he thinks it faulty in not excluding--" the more visible movements with which our ideas of life are most associated"-and, too-"in describing vital changes as a series it scarcely includes the fact that many of them, as Nutrition, Respiration and Secretion, in their sub-divisions, go on simultaneously" (id. 61).

Alleging that no one of these definitions is more than approximately true; and admitting that it may be impossible to find a formula which will bear every test, he nevertheless claims that a more adequate formula may still be found. In pursuit of this Mr. Spencer starts with assimilation as an example of bodily life, in connection

known as intelligence. He considers the vital and non-vital changes arising from nutrition, connected with its transformation into tissue. "Without change food cannot be taken into the blood, nor transformed into tissue; without change there can be no getting from premises to conclusions." These changes are successive and simultaneous, and the first formula from a consideration of these examples runs thus: "Life consists of simultaneous and successive changes" (id. 65).

He next finds "That vital changes, both visceral and cerebral, differ from other changes in their heterogeniety," and from this stand-point the formula is: "Life is made up of heterogeneous changes both simultaneous and successive" (5-1-66.)

But looking at "some point of agreement between the assimilative and logical processes," and distinguishing them from inorganic processes, he discovered that they are distinguished by the "combination subsisting among their constituent changes," and then the formula is, "Life is a combination of heterogeneous changes both simultaneous and successive" (5-1-68).

Then occurs the idea of definiteness as peculiar to the phenomena of life; and this is illustrated by the example of a glacier in which the changes go on in an indefinite manner. So, too, decomposition, which, though exhibiting both simultaneous and successive changes, "which are to a

sense combined in a definite manner; " and the formula with this addition reads thus: "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes both simultaneous and successive" (id. 69).

It seems however that the end is not reached yet--that the is to be preferred to a because the definition is defective both in allowing that there may be other definite combinations of heterogeneous changes, and in directing attention to the heterogeneous changes, rather than to the definiteness of their combination. Thus finally manipulated, "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive" (id. 69, 70).

Yet this, after all, proves, in the mind of the author an incomplete conception. He says: "The ultimate formula" (which is to a considerable extent identical with the one above given) "is, the co-ordination of actions, seeing that 'definite combination' is synonymous with 'co-ordination," and changes both simultaneous and successive' are comprehended under the term 'actions,' but which differs from it in specifying the fact that the actions or changes are heterogeneous, this ultimate formula I say is, after all, but proximately correct" (id. 76).

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True, he continues, it does not fail "by including the growth of crystal," nor "the action of a galvanic battery," nor "the motions of the solar system," nor "those of a watch and a steam engine, &c., but "it fails from omitting the