approximating ever to the perfect, with constant prophecy that that perfection will be attained? The “survival of the fittest” reveals the prodigal method which preserves one of a million germs, casting the others back into the seething crucible for new trials. Can it claim anything more? The laws of nature are grooves in which causes run to effects; but why do they thus move? Calling them by other names will not satisfy. As Newton, when he gave the law of gravitation mathematical form, penetrated not a step toward its cause, so the biologist has not passed the threshold of the domain of life. A recent scientific association sat in silence after a verbose and flippant discussion on protoplasm, when asked by a member what was the difference between living and dead protoplasm? Not one could answer. Life had escaped their observation. Protoplasm dead is no longer protoplasm. The protoplasmic germ impelled by the forces of life, commences its growth, sending out its feeding vessels, and from the beginning copies the paleontological history of the earth, and more completely the biography of its direct ancestors.

When we consider that this invisible fleck bears in its cell or cells the impress of every condition bearing on its progenitors from remotest time, and will express it in all these conditions, it is no longer a phenomenon on which we gaze, but a miracle of creative power, and all that has been written by physiologists since Galen’s time as to its cause is as children’s prattle. The material side furnishes no adequate explanation. Its coarse methods are not adapted to measure the illusive psyche. The balance weighs not, the scalpel dissects not, the retort holds not the elements of the soul.

Scientific Methods of the Study of
Man, and Results.