foundly interesting and
indeed pathetic to me are those attempts of the opening mind of man to
appease its hunger for a Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no voice
in scientific questions. _It is a poem, not a scientific treatise._ In
the former aspect it is for ever beautiful; in the latter it has been,
and it will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful.' My
agreement with Professor Knight extends still further. 'Does the
vital,' he asks, 'proceed by a still remoter development from the
non-vital? Or was it created by a fiat of volition? Or'--and here he
emphasises his question--'has it always existed in some form or other
as an eternal constituent of the universe? I do not see,' he replies,
'how we can escape from the last alternative.' With the whole force of
my conviction I say, Nor do I, though our modes of regarding the
'eternal constituent' may not be the same.

When matter was defined by Descartes, he deliberately excluded the
idea of force or motion from its attributes and from his definition.
Extension only was taken into account. And, inasmuch as the impotence
of matter to generate motion was assumed, its observed motions were
referred to an external cause. God, resident outside of matter, gave
the impulse. In this connection the argument in Young's 'Night
Thoughts' will occur to most readers:

Who Motion foreign to the smallest grain
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bid brute Matter's restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?

Against this notion of Descartes the great deist John Toland, whose
ashes lie unmarked in Putney Churchyard, strenuously contended. He
affirmed motion to be an inherent attribute of matter--that no portion
of matter was at rest, and that even the most quiescent solids were
animated by a motion of their ultimate particles. The success of his
contention, according to the learned and laborious Dr. Berthold,
[Footnote: 'John Toland und der Monismus der Gegenwart,' Heidelberg,
Carl Winter.] entitles Toland to be regarded as the founder of that
monistic doctrine which is now so rapidly spreading.

It seems to me that the idea of vitality entertained in our day by
Professor Knight, closely resembles the idea of motion entertained by
his opponents in Toland's day. Motion was then virtually asserted to
be a thing sui generis, distinct from matter, and incapable of being
generated out of matter. Hence the obvious i