It is not to be supposed that Dr. Beale was unacquainted with Gerlach’s experiments. He has at any rate so far qualified the statement of his hypothesis as to admit that it is only after death that the germinal matter is stained. “The living matter” (he says, _How to Work with the Microscope_, p. 107) “possesses an acid reaction, or to speak more correctly, an acid reaction is always developed immediately after its death.” Now, since this acid reaction only presents itself after death, and it is this which is revealed by the carmine, we have no right to conclude that the carmine singles out the vital parts. Every one knows that the living muscle and nerve, when in repose, present an alkaline or faintly neutral reaction, and after excitation this is changed into an acid reaction, which increases with the exhaustion of the tissue. In strict logic, therefore--if we could logically apply such a test--it is the unstained parts that ought to be called vital. But, in truth, alkalinity and acidity are equally indispensable. 78. The main object of my bringing this question forward was to illustrate the danger of being misled by analysis: a danger we shall see to be very serious in psychological inquiries. The aid derived from analysis need never be undervalued; all that we have to bear in mind is that it is only a logical artifice, and that our real explanation must always be synthetic. Because of the tendency to rely on analysis there has been an imperfect discrimination of the profound difference between ORGANISMS AND MACHINES; and while on the one hand the legitimate striving of the biologist to display the mechanism of organic actions has been denounced by a certain school as Materialism and a hateful attempt to “rob Life of its mystery,” there has been on the other hand a misconception of this mechanism, as if its dependent actions were of the nature of machines, that is to say, as if organized mechanisms were strictly comparable with machines constructed of inorganic parts. No doubt the laws of Mechanics are the same in both, for these are abstract laws which take no account of concrete differences. But when elaborate parallels are drawn up between steam-engines and animal organisms, the coal consumed in the one likened to the food in the other, and the force evolved in the combustion in both being the same, there is a complete obliteration of all that specially distinguishes vital activity.