knows what an equivalent weight' means; knows also that there can be no weight of protoplasm 'equivalent,' chemically speaking, to any amount of carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, that may or can have disappeared. These are simple, well-known, and understood chemical facts, and need no discussion.

4. "But granting for the moment, and for the sake of argument, that these bodies disappear, and that protoplasm appears, it is manifest— almost too manifest to require stating-that there is no resemblance whatever in the two processes by which the results which Professor Huxley considers identical are obtained. In the formation of water, the whole of its constituent parts combine to form an equal weight of the compound; the case is entirely otherwise with regard to protoplasm, for here the so-called elements do not combine at all. On the contrary, they are uncombined or decomposed, by a process and by affinities most assuredly unknown in our laboratories. The carbonic acid and the ammonia are certainly decomposed, and whilst the carbon and nitrogen are assimilated, and add to the bulk of the plant, part of the oxygen is eliminated by the leaves, and part is destined to the performance of various functions in the economy."

And yet it is in this complex programme of decomposition, selection, fixation, and rejection, that we are asked to see nothing more than a process analogous to the formation of water from its elements; and Professor Huxley can see "no break." How wide must a chasm be before it is visible to an Evolutionist?

5. "Under certain conditions" only, and not otherwise, do the "lifeless compounds" aforesaid "give rise to the still more complex body protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life." What are these conditions? The answer is that "when carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and in their place," "an equivalent weight of the matter of life makes its appearance," this appearance and disappearance are due to "the influence of pre-existing protoplasm."

From this it has been hastily, but most unwarrantably, assumed that vitality is a result of some particular arrangement of the molecular particles, the chemical constituents of protoplasm. In other words, that life is a product of protoplasm. But this proposition is demonstrably untrue.

Protoplasm, as known to us, is non-existent except as produced "under the influence of preexisting protoplasm." Water, ammonia, and

carbonic acid cannot combine to form protoplasm unless a principle of life preside over the operation. Unless under those auspices, the combination never takes place. At present, whenever assuming its presidential functions, this principle of life appears invariably to be embodied in pre-existing protoplasm; but no one denies that there was a time when the fact was otherwise. Time was—as geology leaves no room for doubt-when our globe consisted wholly of inorganic matter, and possessed not one single vegetable or animal inhabitant. In that time it was not only possible for life, without being previously embodied, to mould and vivify inert matter, but the possible was the actual too. For if matter, inorganic and inanimate, had not been organized and animated by unembodied life, it would have remained inorganic and inanimate to this day. Those who would escape this conclusion have only one possible alternative. They must suppose that death gave birth to life. That matter, absolutely inert and lifeless, did spontaneously exert itself with all the marvellous energy indispensable for its conversion into living matter. That in making this exertion it wielded powers of which it was not possessed; powers which, under the conditions of the case, it could not have

acquired, except by exercising them before it had acquired them. That, absolutely inert as it was, it yet made this impossible exertion; and, lifeless as it was, it created life.

To reject incredible absurdities like these is to admit that originally protoplasm must have been produced by life not previously embodied; but to admit this and yet to suppose that when, as now, embodied life is observed to give birth to new embodiments, the operative force belongs not to the life itself, but to its protoplasmic embodiment, is "much the same as to suppose that when a tailor, dressed in clothes of his own making, makes a second suit of clothes, this latter is the product not of the tailor himself, but of the clothes he is wearing." therefore is not a product of protoplasm.

6. Nor is it a property of protoplasm.

Life

By the property of an object is meant, in scientific speech, not merely something belonging to the object, but also that it is a thing without which the object could not subsist. Thus, fluidity, solidity, and vaporisation are 'properties" of water, because matter which did not liquefy, congeal, and evaporate at

1 "Old-fashioned Ethics, and Common-sense Metaphysics." By William Thomas Thornton. Macmillan, 1873, chap. iv. p. 167. ("Huxleyism.")

different temperatures would not be water. It is the exhibition of these phenomena, in conjunction with certain others, that constitutes the

aquosity" or wateriness of water. But in no such sense, nor in any sense whatever, is life or "vitality" essential to that species of matter which Mr. Huxley calls "matter of life," or protoplasm. Take from water its aquosity, and water ceases to be water; but you may take away vitality from protoplasm, and yet, according to Mr. Huxley's own affirmation,1 leave protoplasm as much protoplasm as before. Whatever therefore may be the relation which vitality bears to protoplasm, it is a relation totally different from that which aquosity bears to water. When therefore Professor Huxley asks: "What better philosophic status has vitality than aquosity?" we answer :-Protoplasm can do perfectly well without "vitality;" but water cannot for a moment dispense with "aquosity." "Protoplasm, whether living or lifeless, is equally itself; but unaqueous water is unmitigated gibberish." Since then, as Mr. Huxley affirms, protoplasm even when

2

1 "Living or dead," says Mr. Huxley: "If the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties."

2 Thornton's "Old-fashioned Ethics," ut sup., p. 165.