a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen) are clearly analogous. So far as it is on chemical and physical structure that the possession of distinctive properties in any case depends, both bodies may be said. to be on a par. So far the analogy must be allowed to hold; so far, but no farther. "One step farther, and we see not only that protoplasm has, like water, a chemical and physical structure; but that, unlike water, it has also an organised or organic structure. Now this, on the part of protoplasm, is a possession in excess; and with relation to that excess there can be no grounds for analogy." When therefore Mr. Huxley says, "If the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties," the answer is, "Living or dead?" organic or inorganic? That alternative is simply slipped in and passed; but it is in that alternative that the whole matter lies. Chemically, dead protoplasm is to Mr. Huxley quite as good as living protoplasm. It is this dead protoplasm which he finds so delectable in the shape of bread, lobster, mutton. But then it is to be remembered that it is only these-as being inorganic-that can be placed on the same level as water; while

living protoplasm is not only unlike water, but it is unlike dead protoplasm. Living and dead protoplasm are identical only as far as chemistry is concerned (if indeed so far as that); it is therefore evident, consequently, that difference between the two cannot depend on that in which they are identical; i.e., cannot depend on the chemistry.

Life, then, is something else than the result of chemical or physical structure, and it is in another sphere than those of physics or chemistry that its explanation must be found. It is thus that, lifted high enough, the light of the analogy between water and protoplasm is seen to go out. Water, like its constituent elements, has only chemical and physical qualities; like them, it is still inorganic. But not so in protoplasm, where, together with retention of the chemical and physical likeness, there is the addition of the unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas. But this addition is a world in itself: a new and higher world, the world of a self-realizing thought, the world of an entelechy. The relation of the organic to the inorganicof protoplasm dead to protoplasm alive-is not an analogy, but an antithesis: The antithesis of antitheses. In it, in fact, we are in presence of the one impassable gulf "that

gulf which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into it-the mighty gulf between death and life." 1

10. "Protoplasm is the clay of the potter, which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod." On this it has been justly observed that " Mr. Huxley puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a clincher." But the answer is easy. The assertion that all bricks, being made of clay, are the same thing, is one that involves its own limitation. Yes, undoubtedly, we answer, if they are made of the same clay. The bricks are identical if the clay is identical; but, on the other hand, by as much as the clay differs will the bricks differ. And, similarly, all organisms can be identified only if their composing protoplasm can be identified. But when, from indefinite generalizations, we descend to definite particulars, this identification is found to be impossible.

Mr. Huxley's entire theory may be summed

1 Dr. Stirling: "As Regards Protoplasm," p. 41.

K

up in two propositions :-First, "That all animal and vegetable organisms are essentially alike in power, in form, and in substance;" Second, "That all vital and even intellectual functions are the properties of the molecular disposition and changes of the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various animals and vegetables consist." In both propositions the agent of proof is this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm. To establish the first, Mr. Huxley endeavours to identify all organisms (animal and vegetable) in protoplasm. To establish the second, by means of inference from a simple chemical analogy he assigns vitality, and even intellect, to the molecular constituents of the protoplasm, in connection with which they are exhibited.

The second of these propositions has already been examined and refuted. It has been shown1 that life is not a property of protoplasm; that it is not a product of protoplasm; and that vitality and protoplasm are not inseparable. Be protoplasm what it may, vital and intellectual functions are not the products of its molecular constitution.

It is the first of these two propositions which now remains to be examined. Is protoplasm,

1 In paragraphs 5, 6, 8, and 9, pp. 120-129.

as alleged by Mr. Huxley, an actual life-matter, everywhere identical in itself, and one which consequently everywhere involves the identity of all the various organs and organisms which it is assumed to compose? The bricks, says Mr. Huxley, are the same because the clay is the same. But is the clay the same? Can it be identified, as Mr. Huxley alleges, by a threefold unity of faculty, of form, of substance?

To begin then with this simplest question, that of substance. Are all samples of protoplasm identical, first, in their chemical composition, and, second, under the action of the various re-agents? This cannot be affirmed. And it is against the affirmation of this that "we point to the fact of much chemical difference obtaining among the tissues, not only in the proportions of their fundamental elements, but also in the addition (and proportion as well) of such others as chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, potass, soda, lime, magnesia, iron, etc. Vast differences vitally must be legitimately assumed for tissues that are so different chemically."

As to the alleged unities of form and power in protoplasm, according to Stricker, "Proto

2

1 Dr. Stirling: "As Regards Protoplasm," p. 29.

2 Whom Professor Huxley calls, "My valued friend Professor Stricker." ("Yeast," in "Critiques and Addresses,"