1 62 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



physiologists as to the truth of his doctrines so far as 

 they bear upon structure and development, although 

 they are undoubtedly true in several important respects. 



Now the essence of the doctrine propounded by 

 Prof. Huxley, and in this respect also by Dr. Hughes 

 Bennett, is that the vital forces are c molecular forces/ 

 that they are not dependent upon morphological forms 

 or 'cells/ and therefore, that essentially vital mani- 

 festations may take place in mere formless living 

 matter 1 . But, as we have just seen, this is precisely 

 the doctrine to which so many other distinguished bi- 

 ologists have now given in their adhesion. They too 

 Max Schultze, Haeckel, Kiihne, and others have 

 gradually recognized that a something of definite form 

 is no longer necessary that there are independent 

 living things even lower in the scale than the old uni- 

 cellular organisms, and that whether to constitute one 

 of these or to constitute a functional unit of a higher 

 organism, all that is needed is mere indefinite formless 

 protoplasm a mere c shred' of the matter of Life 2 . 



This then being the theory to which our most ac- 

 complished microscopists and physiologists have ar- 

 rived, it will be interesting for us to see how such a 

 conclusion harmonizes with the hypothesis of Evolu- 



1 This is the logical outcome also of the doctrine of Schwann, since 

 he so distinctly maintained that, ' The formation of cells bears the same 

 relation to organic nature, that crystallization does to inorganic.' 



2 See Mr. Stirling's pamphlet, ' As regards Protoplasm in relation to 

 Professor Huxley's Essay on the Physical Basis of Life,' 1869, p. 16. 



