Heredity : with preludes on current events / by Joseph Cook.
- Josephus Flavius Cook
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Heredity : with preludes on current events / by Joseph Cook. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![MAUDSLEY ON HEREDITARY DESCENT. 25 THE LECTURE. If chemical combinations account for living tissues, what accounts for the chemical combinations ? Let science never cease to make petitioning signals at all doors where the law of cause and effect puts up bells and knockers. To him that knocketh in the name of that law, it shall be opened. Again and again we are told by materialistic science, that some doors are not to be approached ; that some laws are incomprehensible ; that it is absolutely beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand the cause of certain changes which result from the action of bioplasmic matter or germinal points. Adhere un¬ relentingly to clear ideas. If chemical combinations cause the formation of living tissues, it is very sure that something has caused the chemical combinations. Have they caused themselves ? Face to face with the facts of biology, dare you adopt the dicer's theory of the universe ? Life or mechanism—which ? is the question in debate concerning living tissues. We have many specious, glittering pleas made in support of the mechanical theory of life. In reply, the opponents of materialism bring into court the living tissues themselves. They exhibit the results of the latest exact research into the difference between the living and the lifeless forms of matter. They spread out in biological charts the resplendent certainties which illustrate the laws of the growth of all living things [referring to charts on the platform]. Aristotle defined life as the cause of form in organisms. Herbert Spencer defines it as the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences. I prefer Aris¬ totle's definition. It has been a part of the audacity of this platform to define life in connection with](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18030051_0034.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
