til]- on tiie physical basis of life. 137 



deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its 

 parts and the manner in which they are put together. 



Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, 

 water, and ammonia disappear, and in their place, under 

 the influence of pre-existing living protoplasm, an 

 equivalent weight of the matter of life makes its 

 appearance ? 



It is true that there is no sort of parity between the 

 properties of the components and the properties of the 

 resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. 

 It is also true that what I have spoken of ao the in- 

 fluence of pre-existing living matter is something quite 

 unintelligible ; but does anybody quite comprehend the 

 modus operandi of an electric spark, which traverses a 

 mixture of oxygen and hydrogen ? 



What justification is there, then, for the assumption of 

 the existence in the living matter of a something which 

 has no representative, or correlative, in the not living 

 matter which gave rise to it ? What better philosophical 

 status has ''vitality" than "aquosity"? And why 

 should "vitality" hope for a better fate than the other 

 " itys" which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus 

 accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its 

 inherent "meat-roasting quality," and scorned the 

 "materialism" of those who explained the turning of the 

 spit by a certain mechanism w r orked by the draught of 

 the chimney ? 



If scientific language is to possess a definite and 

 constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems 

 to me that we are logically bound to apply to the 

 protoplasm, or physical basis of life, the same concep- 

 tions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. 

 If the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, 

 so are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its 

 properties. 



