But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that only a negative conclusion shall follow. "Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible. Life is neither matter nor motion, Therefore: Life is not indestructible. This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment, thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe, without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows that this conscious _ego_--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the theological conception of a God--the one supreme _Ego_ of the universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as apprehensive intelligence, is derived. We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent inductions:-- 1. Cause must exist before effect. 2. Without some vital principle, therefore, preëxisting as a cause, there can be no life-manifestation. 3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure. 4. The reverse of this proposition is also true. 5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as an effect? 6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an incongruent and conflictive judgment. 7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized, whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency. 8. Hence Life, either as a preëxisting cause or vital agency, must precede both animal and vegetal organism. Again:-- 9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that which is produced by an operating cause.