But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks, they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat. Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is, that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs" primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions, and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only. The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline argument of the materialists has its value.