HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 37 



it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice and not by nature 

 from the commonest brick or sundried clod," is no novelty. In 

 fact, the essay is nothing more than a statement in modern 

 terms of the new evidence which modern science furnishes in con- 

 firmation of the familiar conviction that, so far as his physical 

 basis is concerned, man hath no preeminence above the beasts ; 

 that they all have one breath ; that is, the rain on the earth which 

 causes the bud of the tender herb to spring forth ; that as for the 

 earth, it giveth us bread ; that the vital spark is soon quenched 

 unless it is kept alive by fuel from without ; that the living machine 

 must soon break down and wear out ; and that then shall return 

 the dust to the earth as it was. Huxley says : " Past experience 

 leads me to be tolerably certain that when the propositions I have 

 just placed before you are accessible to public comment and criti- 

 cism they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps 

 by some few of the wise and thoughtful." They who remember 

 the reception of the essay are aware that this expectation was not 

 disappointed, but it is hard to understand why ; for its substance, 

 if not its modern language, has been the common property of 

 some of the wise and thoughtful for ages. 



I do not see why any one should challenge Huxley's statement 

 that "it seems to me that we are logically bound to apply to 

 protoplasm or the physical basis of life the same conceptions 

 which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenomena 

 exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by 

 protoplasm its properties." We may have practical objections, 

 based on expediency and not on logic, to the further statement 

 that "we live in the hope and in the faith that by the advance of 

 molecular physics we shall, by and by, be able to see our way as 

 clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water as 

 we are now able to deduce the operation of a watch from the form of 

 its parts and the way they are put together." Faith and hope are 

 good things no doubt, and " expectation is permissible when belief is 

 not "(VIII. 1870); but experience teaches that the expectation or 

 faith of the master is very apt to become belief in the mind of the 

 student, and " science warns us that the assertion which outstrips 

 evidence is not only a blunder, but a crime." (III., IV., 150, 1880). 

 In order to avoid all danger of adding to the criminal classes it 



