Professor Lionel Reale, F.R.S., on Modern Scientific Thought.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4218, 8 July 1882, Page 5 (Supplement)

Professor Lionel Reale, F.R.S., on Modern Scientific Thought.

A crowded meeting of the members of the Victoria (Philosophical) Institute, —a Society founded to investigate all scientific questions, including any said /to militate against Religious Belief— took place at No 7, Adelphi Terrace, London, on the 15th of May* when Professor Lionel Beale, F.K S., President (1881) of the Microscopical Society, read a paper. He commenced by alluding to the varied opinions that existed among scientific men, as to whether the hypotheses upon which modern scientific opinion in favor of some form of the physical^ doctrine of life were based are worthy of acceptance. He himself confessed that he was among those who held " that no form of the hypothesis which attributes the phenomena of the living world to mere matter and its properties has been, or can be, justified by reason." He added,—"l would draw attention to the declaration again and again repeated, and now taught even to children, that the living and the noD-living differ only in degree, that the living has been evolved by degrees from the nonliving, and that the latter passes by gradations towards the former state. No one has adduced any evidence in proof of these conclusions, which are in fact, dictatorial assertions only, and no specimen of any kind of matter which is actually passing from the non-living to the living state, or which can be shown to establish any connexion between the absolutely different conditions of matter, has been, or can be at this time brought forward. Between purely vital and purely physical actions not the faintest analogy has been shown to exist". The living world is absolutely distinct from the non-living 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 which controls, regulates and manages both matter and its forces according, it may be, to laws, but not the laws of inert matter. It is not only one or two of the positions assumed by the materialist that are open to doubt or objection. Facts completely controvert all materialistic views which have been put forward. To be condemned as untenable is the doctrine that there is a relationship between non-living and living matter, or that. the term molecular mechanism can be applied to the former. The simple truth is, that the essential phenomena of all living beings cannot be explained without recourse to some hypothesis of power totally different from any of the known forms or modes of energy. Any one who allows his reason to be influenced by the facts of nature as at present discovered will feel obliged to admit the existence of vital power as distinct from, and capable of controlling, the ordinary forces of non-living matter. It has been conclusively shown that the laws of vital force or power are distinct from those by which ordinary matter and its forces are governed." The author then referred to Nature as explained by the Materialist:"" A nature which was really a blind, insatiable, irresistible fate, falsely called law, destitute of intelligence and reason, devoid of mercy and justice, is the Nature held up for our admiration, with the consoling assurance of dictatorial authority that it sprang from chaos in obedience to everlasting self-originating (?) law, and that it will return to chaos, in obedience to the same,—all life, and work, and thought being but the undulations of cosmic nebulosity, and dependent upon the never ceasing gyrations of infinite, everlasting atoms, as they bound through the ages from void to void. This, the dullest, the narrowest, the most superficial of all creeds—materialism, which includes some mixture of antitheism and atheism of various forms and hues—has been half accepted by hundreds of persons during the last few years. I believe all materialistic doctrines, vary as they may in detail, will be found to agree in accepting as • a truth—if, indeed, they are not actually based on it—the monstrous assumption that the living and the nonliving are one, and that every living thing is just as much a machine as a watch, or a windmill, or a hydraulic apparatus. According to the material contention, everything owes its existence to the properties of the material particles out of which it is constructed. But is it not strange that it never seems to have occurred to the materialistic devotee that, neither the watch, nor the steam-engine, nor the windmill, nor. the; hydraulic apparatus, nor any other machine known to, or made by, any individual in this world, is dependent for its construction upon the properties of the material particles of the matter out of which its several parts have been constructed"! " Several new Australian and American subscribers were announced, making the total strength of Institute 960.