And such a result must very strongly tend to occur, from the vigorous attraction between acid and basic chemical radicals. Many other unions might take place, between the remaining cells of the continued division. Thus the final result of the division of a single normal cell, would be the reproduction, from the union of its many daughter cells, of numerous normal cells, differing perhaps considerably in their degree of homogeneity, and in the completeness of their polar balance, yet each capable of setting up a new life cycle.

If now we give this polarity another name, and call it sexual polarity, new light may be thrown upon the life problem. Life is continuous, but not in the individual. The individual tends towards chemical inertness and final death. The continuity of life exists only in the race; and such, under our hypothesis, must be the law governing the development of the organic life units. Division, which is their only available method of continued growth, brings them more and more towards chemical inertness and loss of vitality. Reunion of oppositely polarized germs, which have arisen from the original individual, restores the life activity by the production of a new vitalized individual. The life energy, failing in the individual, is restored in the race.

If we replace the words acid and basic polarity by male and female polarity, the cycle of life opens out before us. A normal unit or germ possesses balanced male and female energies. Continued division produces a multitude of new cells, some with an excess of male, some of female energy. As either energy weakens, the life energy of the new unit weakens. Each of these cells is a male or a female germ. The union of two of opposite sex produces a fertilized germ, in which the balance of male and female energies is restored, and which is, therefore, capable of setting up a new cycle of development. All that we know of the life development of Protozoan animals is in accordance with this hypothesis. And evidently, if the sexual polarities were balanced in the original Protozoan, they must be balanced in all its descendants taken as a whole; so that the degree of opposite polarities, and the numbers of each sex, must continue equal. And as in the reunion of germs, it is highly improbable that out of the vast numbers produced, two of exactly balanced sexual polarity should meet, therefore the new individuals are very likely to be specially male or female in condition, possessing some excess of acid or basic energy in their chemical organization.

[To be continued.]

ONLY

THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE.

BY W. N. LOCKINGTON.

1. MONISM v. DUALISM.

NLY two complete theories of the origin, nature, and preservation of the universe have as yet been presented. The first of these, monism, assumes the essential unity of the universe. Everything within the universal bounds, from the tiniest particle to the hugest globe; from the earth on which we poor reasoners dwell to the farthest star in heaven's vast galaxy; from the heaviest metal to the most etherealized interstellar medium, is by this theory conceived of as consisting of but one substance, to which, in the poverty of our human speech, we have given the name of "matter," and to all whose manifestations, qualities or properties, by which we are cognizant of its existence, we give the name of "force."

The second or dualistic theory accepts matter as it finds it, and to a certain extent admits that matter is possessed of qualities or gives out manifestations which may be called force; but in order to explain the existence of matter, assumes, entirely outside of material existence, a second principle, which existed before matter, created that matter, endowed it with force, and is itself directly active in the highest manifestations of force exhibited by material organisms.

Monism asks it disciples to believe many things which, to the understanding of the highest outcome of this earth's activities, are as yet incomprehensible. The formation and preservation of suns and planets; the molecular motions and structure of inorganic materials; the origin, nature, continuance and variation of life, have all to be conceived as emanating from matter by the action of its own inherent force.

Dualism escapes these difficulties-strikes them out with a word by one vast assumption. An immaterial, or rather non-material agency accounts not only for all the manifestations of force, from that which forms a crystal to the highly developed consciousness of the wisest man, but for the very existence of matter itself. The difficulty left is to account for the origin, nature and continued existence of the assumed creative power, and for the manner in which it was able to form matter out of preexistent nothing.

The majority of men in all ages, and most of the accepted: religions of mankind, have adopted the dualistic theory. By it the mind of man was relieved from all speculations regarding the nature of the material universe, every ordinary occurrence was referred to the action of a creative and preservative force, and extraordinary phenomena were unhesitatingly ascribed to a more direct agency of that force.

But the spirit of inquiry is natural to the human mind, when it is not distorted by education or paralyzed by sloth. Certain results were observed to follow certain causes with unerring regularity, whether in the broad domains of astronomy or in the narrow limits of human activities, and confidence in these results became so unbounded that men in their daily life, while theoretically believing in an omnipotent and omnipresent power, based all their actions upon the known properties of material things. This dual code of life is that observed throughout Christendom at the present epoch, and causes strange eccentricities.

To explain this inconsistency, the idea of law arose. The omnipotent, all-knowing power which made matter and gave it its properties either cannot (a contradiction) or will not change those properties. Laws once made were conceived to continue either. by the properties originally impressed upon matter by its creator, or by the continual preservative power of that creator, exercised invariably according to certain fixed rules which he has made for himself, and according to a prearranged design which he has proposed to himself to work out.

Under this phase of dualism, a belief in any departure from the known laws of matter becomes an improbability amounting almost to the impossibility of such departure which is the logical result of the monistic view. This elimination from the order of the universe of any present interference of a creative power, reduces that power to the position of a passive spectator, or, at most, of an executor of laws framed in the far past, and is, therefore, rightly regarded by rigid dualists as a great concession in favor of monism.

A dualist conceives consciousness, or the soul, to be a direct emanation from the deity, imprisoned for a certain time within material bonds, but prompt at its liberation to return either to the God who gave it or to the punishment provided for it in consequence of its misdeeds. To account for the existence of evil, the

idea of deity has also been made dual, including a good and evil principle, at war with each other. The evil principle, though nominally the weaker, is, in the current belief, allowed to succeed in the ruin of the future of the great majority of individual souls. Thus a dualist has at least a definite philosophy, one which, however it may be doubted, can never be disproved; and one which, however it may be believed, can never be proved.

Leaving dualism for a while, let us consider how monism can explain consciousness; let us see if it has yet fixed upon a definite theory.

II. MATTER, FORCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

The exigencies of language compel us to give names to express ideas which are not things, and it is a tendency of the human mind to figuratively speak of these names as though they were objects, and too often to conceive of them as actual objects. The word "matter," in the strict monistic sense, must include all properties exhibited by matter just as surely as the name "man" must be held to include all the physical and moral properties of man. Just as justice is an abstraction of our language put instead of" the state of being just," so is force an abstract term meaning "the state of being forcible," and consciousness an abstract noun meaning “the state of being conscious." The latter word is in its very shape clearly a nominal form of the adjective conscious, but in the case of force it is less easy to define, since the adjective "forcible " is commonly held in a more limited sense than the noun force, which is usually adjectived by the words "potential" and "kinetic" (actual), dependent upon whether the matter having force is using that quality internally or externally. "Latent heat," "potential energy," and other similar phrases, must be held simply to mean that a certain quantity of matter, not at the moment exhibiting heat or energy to our senses, may, under changed conditions, be made to do so, whilst "sensible heat" and "kinetic energy" mean the exhibition of those properties to our senses by portions of the universal

matter.

But there is a particular exhibition of force, residing only in certain complex and unstable compounds, which differs so widely from other forces that we are compelled to give it a distinct name -consciousness. Unable to explain how consciousness can be produced, yet forced to acknowledge that it has never been met

with apart from matter, some monists conceive of it as an independent thing, which is, however, unable to manifest itself except through matter. Such a belief is simply a degradation of the supernatural half of a dualist's belief. According to it, that which to a dualist is the soul, the emanation from an omnipotent deity, is a slave of matter. Such conceptions arise from the gross ideas of matter that have so long prevailed. The true conception of matter is "everything that exists." Under the monistic idea, as under the dualistic, the belief in supreme and subordinate spirits may exist, but the spiritualist who is a monist must concede the materiality of his supposed spirits. Under the monistic idea a future life is as possible as under the dualistic, but future consciousness must be accompanied by the matter which exhibits it, and the future existence of an individual must be a mental continuation of his present mentality. The Buddhistic idea of Nirvana, or of a state of generalized blessedness, an absorbption into an ocean of conscious matter, may be logically held by a monist; whether he can find peace in believing in an eternity of existence, coupled with annihilation of individuality, is another question. To be consistent, every monist must, when he speaks of consciousness, use that term in an abstract sense, as a certain forcequality of highly organized matter.

To conclude, the shades of belief possible are almost endless, and the positive proof or disproof of most of them is impossible. It would be well, therefore, for all who have the slightest claim to the possession of a high degree of consciousness; who claim to be intelligent or civilized, to make a broad distinction between proved facts and theoretical doctrines, and to have too much charity to be prejudiced against, and still less to discriminate against, those whose honest doctrines differ from their own. At the same time the faith of the truly scientific mind will be in harmony with proved facts, and he will be at any time ready to surrender a belief in deference to such facts.

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EDITORS' TABLE.

EDITORS: A. S. PACKARD, JR., AND E. D. COPE.

The mortal remains of Charles Darwin lie by the side of those of Sir Isaac Newton, in Westminster Abbey. A great nation in doing homage to the name and fame of the world-renowned naturalist, has thus expressed its judgment of the true place he