Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/11

 physics and metaphysics being the poles of his existence, and the social sciences comprising his history. But it may be asked if our minds are made up as to whether man is altogether an object of scientific study or not? whether the mysteries of his organization are fairly subjects admitting of investigation? and, therefore, whether it is becoming in the Harveian orator to stir up your minds to search these mysteries out to their fullest extent? The doubt implied is not one of my own suggesting, for I confess it seems strange to me that any one at this day should assert that "life is a power entirely different from and in no way correlated with matter and its ordinary forces," and consequently, I may add, no proper object of science. Yet this assertion, though not the inference, comes from one amongst ourselves, who is well entitled to respect, and therefore it obliges me to a survey of our present position.

It is not thirty years since it was gravelyquestioned whether a living body could not