THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. OCTOBER, 1883. T MATTER LIVING AND NOT-LIVING. BY PAUL R. SHIPMAN. HE Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain, has published, in pamphlet form, a paper by Professor Lionel S. Beale, in which that eminent physician and microscopist attacks, with free assertion and aspersion, the doctrine of the identity of living and not-living matter. Dr. Beale is himself a member of the Victoria Institute, and, if one may judge from the imprimatur which the society has set on his paper, he is esteemed a spokesman worthy of its name, if not a foeman worthy of anybody's steel; and no doubt the paper has proved acceptable to those for whom it was intended. It may be worth while, therefore, in the interest especially of this excellent class, to examine what he has to say. Dr. Beale, it might better be mentioned at once, has a theory of his own, or at least of his adoption, with which he confronts the theory of his aversion; and it will conduce to clearness, as well as brevity, if we first look at the opposing theories side by side, premising that Dr. Beale expressly lays the question of their relative merits before the tribunal of science, whose jurisdiction in the case he thereby acknowledges. Let us at the outset, then, regard the two theories as he sets them face to face. Dr. Beale opens the discussion by confessing that he finds himself among the "very small number" who "have objected to the physical view of life as untenable in the present state of scientific knowledge,” a qualification which in the course of his paper he repeats and reiterates, and which means, if it means anything, that the capacity of physical causes in this relation has not yet been explored exhaustively, and that the view in question may become tenable in the progress of scientific knowledge. "The living world," Dr. Beale proceeds to say, in the VOL. XXIII.-46 face of this significant admission, "is absolutely distinct from the nonliving world, and, instead of being a necessary outcome of it, is, compared with the antiquity of matter, probably a very recent addition to it-not, of course, an addition of mere transformed or modified matter and energy, but of transcendent power conferred on matter, by which both matter and its forces are controlled, regulated, and arranged, according, it may be, to laws, but not the laws of inert matter.' This additional agent is, of course, our old acquaintance-the vital force. Dr. Beale adds: "It may be freely admitted that, if we attribute to vital power certain phenomena of the living world which have not been, and can not be, explained or accounted for by any physical laws yet discovered, we thereby assume an agency which we are unable to isolate or demonstrate, and the existence of which we can not in any way prove. On the other hand, it is only fair to observe that, if we assume that phenomena peculiar to life will some day be explained by physics, we certainly act in a manner which is not sanctioned by science—we assume, we prophesy; and prophetic assumptions of every kind are contrary to the spirit of science. . . . But is it not in accordance with reason," he concludes, "to assume the existence of a peculiar power to account for phenomena which are peculiar to living beings, which differ totally from any known physical phenomena, and which can not be imitated-and is it not contrary to reason to prophesy that such phenomena will one day be explained by ordinary forces or powers?" Such is his statement of the case, and such the argument by which he supports his side of it. A few words, I think, will suffice to show the invalidity of the argument. The question, fortunately, hinges on a point which science has determined definitively. A genuine hypothesis, in the scientific sense, is capable of proof or disproof; for an hypothesis capable of neither must always remain an hypothesis, and, instead of leading to an explanation of phenomena, serves to block the way to it. I may say here, parenthetically, that too much verbal respect, as it seems to me, is usually paid by scientific thinkers to assertions of this transcendent sort; strictly speaking, an assertion, of which it is said that it can be "neither proved nor disproved," is disproved by denying it, for the denial, being of equal validity with the assertion, nullifies it, leaving zero as the logical result, and an assertion reduced to zero is effectually disproved. But to return. An unverifiable hypothesis, as incompetent to lead to certainty, has no reason of being; and, consequently, science pronounces it illegitimate. But the hypothesis of a vital force, Dr. Beale admits, is unverifiable. It assumes "an agency," he owns, "which we are unable to isolate or demonstrate, and the existence of which we can not in any way prove." It is, therefore, illegitimate on his own showing. Moreover, a genuinely scientific hypothesis does not assume an unknown cause, much less an unknowable one, before the inadequacy of known causes has been proved, for, till then, the necessity of an additional cause can not appear. The maxim which imposes this condition on hypotheses, known in philosophical literature as Occam's razor, is declared by Sir William Hamilton, who calls it the law of Parcimony, to be "the most important maxim in the regulation of philosophical procedure, when it is necessary to resort to an hypothesis." Its soundness is questioned by no one. But Dr. Beale, as we have seen, admits by plain implication, repeatedly, that known causes have not yet been proved inadequate to explain the phenomena of life. His cautious statement is that they are inadequate "in the present state of scientific knowledge." Wherefore, as he must also admit, his assumption of a hyperphysical agent violates flatly the law of Parcimony; it falls under the first stroke of Occam's razor. It is thus doubly illegitimate, on his own showing. Finally, the hypothesis, if admitted, would not explain the phenomena, since it merely refers them to a power of which confessedly we can know neither the existence nor the laws, assuming to explain that which we do not know now by that which we can never know or so much as represent in thought; and it goes without saying that an hypothesis which explains nothing is good for nothing. In branding it with illegitimacy, science but renews the stigma that common sense had set on it. The hypothesis, it follows, has no standing in the court of science, which rules it out at the threshold; and to the court of science, be it remembered, Dr. Beale has appealed. One thing, then, is certain : whatever may be the merits or demerits of the hypothesis which he opposes, the hypothesis which he espouses has no merits at all. It is radically vicious, and wholly inadmissible. So far from being "in accordance with reason," it is in flagrant defiance of it. It remains to inquire into the remaining hypothesis. If we may credit Dr. Beale, it is as spurious as his own. "If we assume," he tells us, "that phenomena peculiar to life will some day be explained by physics, we certainly act in a manner which is not sanctioned by science-we assume, we prophesy; and prophetic assumptions of every kind are contrary to the spirit of science." That depends on the character of the assumptions. If, like his hypothesis, they are incapable of proof or disproof, besides gratuitously multiplying causes, and explaining nothing after all, they undoubtedly are contrary not only to the spirit but to the letter of science; but, if they fulfill the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis, in lieu of violating them at all points, as his own assumption does, they as undoubtedly are in strict harmony with science. It would be passing strange if they were not. If "prophetic assumptions of every kind" were in truth "contrary to the spirit of science," that " star-eyed" creature would be more contrary than the privilege of her sex allows, for it is by "prophetic assumptions" that she has won her chief triumphs, nearly everything which is now certainty having once been assumption. When Copernicus divined that the planets revolve around the sun; when Kepler suggested that the planetary orbits are ellipses; when Newton proposed the law of gravitation, and, later, the identity of gravitation with the central force of the solar system; when Huygens conjectured that light is propagated by undulations; when Harvey, in the profession of which Dr. Beale is an ornament, supposed that the blood flows from the left side of the heart into the right through the arteries and veins; when Locke asserted that heat is motion; when Franklin assumed that lightning and electricity are one; when Dalton affirmed that elements combine in definite, reciprocal, and multiple proportions; when Leverrier announced the existence and position of a planet outside the orbit of Uranus; when Faraday conceived the principle of definite electro-chemical decomposition-they each and all indulged in what were "prophetic assumptions," until in due time the assumptions were proved and the prophecy accomplished. And so, for the most part, with the rest. Wherever, indeed, there is an inquisitor of nature, whether observer or experimenter, there is likely to stand behind him some hypothesis, more or less shifting, more or less defined, more or less probable, which guides his inquiries and shapes their results; and what is generally true of the experimental sciences is true in greater degree of the sciences in which experiment is impossible or possible only within a narrow range, such as astronomy, biology, psychology, sociology. The truth is, without "prophetic assumptions," science would need either omnipotent insight, to see through every problem at once, or that omnipotent blindness which enables its happy possessor to solve every problem, as Dr. Beale would solve the problem of life, by referring it out of hand to some agency beyond the bounds of human knowledge; but, as science is endowed with neither, it has, in general, no other course, certainly no better course, than to proceed tentatively by "prophetic assumptions," careful only, though rigorously careful, that these shall fulfill the acknowledged conditions of a legitimate hypothesis. As for such "assumptions" as Dr. Beale's, they are not "prophetic," it is true, but only because they forever renounce the hope of explanation. Science rejects them, as we have seen. Let us see whether or not the hypothesis of the evolution of living from not-living matter encounters the same fate. To begin with, the hypothesis, it will not be denied, is verifiable, for it assumes only a certain competency in the properties of matter, which, if it exists, is capable of proof under possible conditions, and, if it does not exist, is capable in like manner of disproof; so that in the end the assumption must lead to certainty or step down and out. Such being the case, it fulfills the first condition of a legitimate hypothesis. The hypothesis, in the next place, assumes no special cause, known |