V - LOTZE, BEALE, AND HUXLEY ON LIVING TISSUES

Summary

“This seems to me to be as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation, that life proceeds from life, and nothing but life.”

—Sir William Thomson, “Inaugural Address before the British Association,” “Nature,” vol. iv. p. 269.

The scientific mind can find no repose in the mere registration of sequences in nature. The further question obtrudes itself with resistless might, Whence came the sequences?”

—Professor Tyndall “Fragments of Science,” p. 64.

PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS.

Our people are about entering on a presidential election in presence of all the other nations who are our guests. If a man's head, character, and career are each a truncated cone, lacking all the upper zones, he is no fit centennial candidate. This autumn's choice may be a rudder of the cause of Civil Service reform in many a century to come. Both political parties assert that a great evil exists in the management of our party political patronage; and both call loudly for reform. Is it not the duty of thoughtful men in all the professions, to see to it that gilded demagogism does not teach the people a lie in the smooth name of democracy? We are told that we must beware of an aristocracy of office-holders. We are assured that Civil Service reform, such as both parties demand, may end in the creation of an office-holding class. […]