PROTOPLASM. 



advancing vain speculations and fanciful hypotheses. Is it 

 then the attempt to speculate in one particular direction 

 that gives such offence in these days, and which ought to 

 be put down, with the utmost firmness ? The new school 

 professes to consider all enquiries worthless which are not 

 conducted by experiment and observation, and yet how many 

 obscure and doubtful facts of observation and experiment 

 are advanced and used as scientific certainties, when the 

 magic light of physical theory has been projected upon 

 them? It is indeed very desirable to bring us face to face 

 with " facts," but it is astonishing how many grand facts of 

 the profoundest significance are slowly resolved into harm- 

 less fictions of the imagination condensed and duly con- 

 centrated into very strong language to suit the dictates of 

 a party determined to make people think in one way only, 

 or to prevent them from thinking at all. But the autho- 

 ritative language of opponents need not deter us from 

 entering upon the discussion of a matter which is of 

 more than ordinary interest to all, and I shall venture to 

 draw certain conclusions concerning the probable nature of 

 life ; although I can only receive indirect assistance from 

 observation and experiment. 



OF VITALITY. 



How are we to explain the wonderful changes which 

 take place in the germinal or living matter, and how are we 

 to account for the capacity which this exhibits of passing 

 through orderly series of changes, the last of which seems 

 to have been provided for, and, as it were, anticipated from 

 the very first ? 



