A GREAT LESSON. 255 



ject to this kind of terror, are wholly unconscious of the subjection. 

 It is a remarkable illustration of this phenomenon that Mr. John 

 Murray was strongly advised against the publication of his views in 

 derogation of Darwin's long-accepted theory of the coral islands, and 

 was actually induced to delay it for two years. Yet the late Sir Wy- 

 ville Thomson, who was at the head of the naturalists of the Chal- 

 lenger expedition, was himself convinced by Mr. Murray's reasoning, 

 and the short but clear abstract of it in the second volume of the 

 narrative of the voyage has since had the assent of all his colleagues.* 

 Nor is this the only case, though it is the most important, in which 

 Mr. Murray has had strength to be a great iconoclast. Along with 

 the earlier specimens of deep-sea deposits sent home by naturalists 

 during the first soundings in connection with the Atlantic telegraph 

 cable, there was very often a sort of enveloping slimy mucus in the 

 containing bottles which arrested the attention and excited the curi- 

 osity of the specialists to whom they were consigned. It was struct- 

 ureless to all microscopic examination. But so is all the proto- 

 plasmic matter of which the lowest animals are formed. Could it be 

 a widely-diffused medium of this protoplasmic material, not yet 

 specialized or individualized into organic forms, nor itself yet in a 

 condition to build up inorganic skeletons for a habitation ? Here was 

 a grand idea. It would be well to find missing links ; but it would 

 be better to find the primordial pabulum out of which all living 

 things had come. The ultra-Darwinian enthusiasts were enchanted, 

 Haeckel clapped his hands and shouted out Eureka loudly. Even the 

 cautious and discriminating mind of Professor Huxley was caught 

 by this new and grand generalization of the " physical basis of life." 

 It was announced by him to the British Association in 1868. Dr. 

 William Carpenter took up the chorus. He spoke of " a living ex- 

 panse of protoplasmic substance," penetrating with its living sub- 

 stance the " whole mass " of the oceanic mud.f A fine new Greek 

 name was devised for this mother slime, and it was christened 

 "Bathybius," from the consecrated deeps in which it lay. The con- 

 ception ran like wildfire through the popular literature of science, and 

 here again there was something like a coming plebiscite, in its favor. 

 Expected imagination soon played its part. Wonderful movements 

 were seen in this mysterious slime. It became an "irregular net- 

 work," and it could be seen gradually " altering its form," so that 

 "entangled granules gradually changed their relative positions." J 

 The naturalists of the Challenger began their voyage in the full 

 Bathybian faith. But the sturdy mind of Mr. John Murray kept its 

 balance — all the more easily since he never could himself find or see 

 any trace of this pelagic protoplasm when the dredges of the Chal- 



* " Narrative of the Challenger Expedition," vol. i, p. 781. 



f " Proceedings of the Royal Society," No. 107, 1868, pp. 190, 191. 



X " The Depths of the Sea," second edition, London, 1874, pp. 410-415. 



