r
involuntary life, seems quite independent of the man himself. Is the
spirit of a race or a nation, or of the times in which we live, another
illustration of the same mysterious entity?

If the vital principle, or vital force, is a fiction, invented to give
the mind something to take hold of, we are in no worse case than we are
in some other matters. Science tells us that there is no such _thing_ as
heat, or light; these are only modes of activity in matter.

In the same way we seem forced to think of life, vitality, as an
entity--a fact as real as electricity or light, though it may be only a
mode of motion. It may be of physico-chemical origin, as much so as
heat, or light; and yet it is something as distinctive as they are among
material things, and is involved in the same mystery. Is magnetism or
gravitation a real thing? or, in the moral world, is love, charity, or
consciousness itself? The world seems to be run by nonentities. Heat,
light, life, seem nonentities. That which organizes the different parts
or organs of the human body into a unit, and makes of the many organs
one organism, is a nonentity. That which makes an oak an oak, and a
pine a pine, is a nonentity. That which makes a sheep a sheep, and an ox
an ox, is to science a nonentity. To physical science the soul is a
nonentity.

There is something in the cells of the muscles that makes them contract,
and in the cells of the heart that makes it beat; that something is not
active in the other cells of the body. But it is a nonentity. The body
is a machine and a laboratory combined, but that which cooerdinates them
and makes them work together--what is that? Another nonentity. That
which distinguishes a living machine from a dead machine, science has no
name for, except molecular attraction and repulsion, and these are names
merely; they are nonentities. Is there not molecular attraction and
repulsion in a steam-engine also? And yet it is not alive. What has to
supplement the mechanical and the chemical to make matter alive? We have
no name for it but the vital, be it an entity or a nonentity. We have no
name for a flash of lightning but electricity, be it an entity or a
nonentity. We have no name for that which distinguishes a man from a
brute, but mind, soul, be it an entity or a nonentity. We have no name
for that which distinguishes the organic from the inorganic but
vitality, be it an entity or a nonentity.

VII

Without metaphysics we can do