Excerpt from The Mystery of Life: An Essay in Reply to Dr. Gull's Attack on the Theory of Vitality in His Harveian Oration for 1870 The groundwork of the following essay was published in the "Fortnightly Review," for September 1st, 1870, in reply to some remarks by Dr. Gull, in his Harveian Oration delivered before the President and Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians, on June 24th of the same year. The importance of the issue cannot easily be exaggerated. Forced by the evidence of very many facts to accept the theory of vitality, I would, nevertheless, abandon this idea assailed by Dr. Gull, if the truth of any one of the physical doctrines of life opposed to my views had been rendered probable by scientific evidence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.