67. It may help to elucidate certain important points if I here examine the hypothesis which Dr. Beale has worked out with such patient skill, but with what seem to me such unphysiological results. He deserves, I think, more applause than has been awarded to him, not only for the admirable patience with which he has pursued the idea, but also for the striking definiteness of the idea itself--always a great advantage in an hypothesis, since it gives precision to research. If biologists have paid but little attention to it, this is no doubt due to the theoretical, still more than to the observational contradictions it presents. Histologists dispute his facts, or his interpretations; while other biologists do not see their way in the application of his hypothesis. Respecting all disputed points of observation I shall be silent, for I have myself made no systematic researches in this direction, such as would entitle me to form an estimate of the evidence. But my dissent from the hypothesis is founded on biological principles so fundamental that I should be willing to take my stand entirely on the facts he himself puts forward.[22] 68. The hypothesis is that nothing in the organism has any claim to vitality except the minute masses of protoplasm (by him called bioplasm), which in the egg represent, he thinks, about the one-thousandth part of the whole mass, the rest being lifeless matter, namely, pabulum, and formed material. This bioplasm is the _germinal matter_ out of which, by a _process of dying_, arise the tissues and humors constituting the _formed material_--these, with the pabulum which feeds the germinal matter, being all dead material. The germinal matter itself, though living, only lives because there is temporarily associated with it that Vital Force of which we have already spoken (§ 14). In virtue of this association, a particle of matter not exceeding the one hundred-thousandth of an inch in diameter is said to be alive; and, presumably, to contain within it all those manifold powers which the term Life condenses. The pabulum brought under the influence of this Vital Force is transformed into germinal matter which, escaping from this mysterious influence, _dies into tissue_. Muscle-fibres and nerve-fibres are thus not living parts, nor are their actions vital. So that, to be consistent, we must not speak of the organism as living, but as a dead structure _produced_ by the Vital Force, and _set in action_ by the aid of scattered bits of germinal matter. He has not, I think, stated whether each of these bioplasms has its own Vital Force, so that the organism is the theatre of millions of Vital Forces; or whether it is one Vital Force which animates the whole organic world of plants and animals. But nothing can be less equivocal than his position respecting the lifelessness of every part of the organism except the germinal matter.