Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/16

14 material conditions of a certain kind, and that, for the organic conversion we must begin with a living body or its germ. That the boast of the physiologist is like the boast of Archimedes. If he wanted a, they require germs or ova and a living body. But it is clear that such an objection has no weight as in favour of a vital force which is not material, since it is abundantly proved that, whatever be the conditions required, they do not generate any power, but only vary the form of it.'

They who maintain the hypothesis of a separate vital force independent of the ordinary forces of nature, and which has no essential relation to them, do, by the very terms of the hypothesis, assume that the phenomena in living things are out of the proper range of science, and they consign us to a perpetual mental inactivity and ignorance in that region of knowledge in which above all others man is interested. They seem to abjure that birthright which a learned physiologist has spoken of as our highest in-