Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts') of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must except to not less than three points in as many lines of his over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes "dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are bound to except.