Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The machinery of life / a lecture by Lionel S. Beale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.
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![matter with this kind of argument—As the keys of watches and food both consist of material particles, and as a watch will not go without being wound up, and an animal will not -TO without food, the latter is wound up by the food as the former is fed by the key. Clearly, then, watches and animals are mechanisms, and are governed by the same physical laws, &c., &c. According to physicists, there is every reason why we should take this view. It is iiot right to resist evidence, so we must believe that we are wound up by our food just as we wind up our Avatches by the key, and as everything that is capable of being wound up must contain wheels and springs, it is obvious the body is made of wheels and springs. No one has found wheels and springs in any living body, but that is of no consequence, as wheels and springs, or something analogous to wheels and springs, may be found any day, and if they are not found in our time, they will be found in the time to come, as has been decided by physicists, who belong to the class of privileged spirits, and know how to use their imagination aright. As has been said, the question that concerns us is, what is the truth ? Although no machinery has been found in a living thing, the latter may still be a machine, for does not a watch when called by a physicist a creature change its nature, though it may not have been proved to grow and to eat grass like an ox ? Science is progressive. If physicists are not to be allowed to call living things machines, and machines creatures, they will protest that, in consequence of the bias of previous education, people are as yet unable to understand the new truths; but the next generation will, ])erhaps, be in a more fortunate position and, not being](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2144366x_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
