30 JOURNAL OF THE [April, 



innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we 

 know ? Or is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, 

 differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are 

 aggregated ? Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again 

 resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done ? " To these 

 queries Professor Huxley, in the name of modern science, 

 answers, as Doctor Beale would answer, that " under whatever 

 disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, 

 the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved 

 into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, 

 and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it 

 died." " All work," he goes on to say, " implies waste, and the 

 work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of proto- 

 plasm." But " it is clear that this process of expenditure can- 

 not go on forever," and so the problem is reached : how is the 

 renewal of protoplasm accomplished ? Here again Professor 

 Huxley answers as Doctor Beale would answer : — by the appro- 

 priation and assimilation of pabulum ; but as to the nature and 

 properties of pabulum, he and Doctor Beale differ absolutely. 



To Doctor Beale there is as much difference between living 

 protoplasm and dead pabulum as there is between the ox and his 

 hay. To him living protoplasm, alone is protoplasm. No such 

 thing as dead protoplasm is possible. Protoplasm invariably 

 dies into formed material, and formed material may become 

 pabulum. Pabulum does, indeed, again become protoplasm ; 

 but the three things I have named are always perfectly distinct, 

 at least there is an absolute gulf between protoplasm and pabu- 

 lum ; and when pabulum becomes protoplasm it is by a sudden, 

 less than instantaneous, leap, and not by a graded progression. 



But to Professor Huxley, the mutton, lobster, or bread which 

 he supposes himself to take for the replenishment of his wasted 

 protoplasm, appears to be itself protoplasm, though he speaks 

 of it as dead for the time being, and as if its life-history (whether 

 in biped, quadruped, crustacean, or cereal) depended merely 

 upon the channel into which it chanced to drift, and the motion 

 it happened to acquire, as it was borne along the general stream 

 of organic existence ; for he says : " this mutton was once the 

 living protoplasm, more or less modified, of another animal, — a 

 sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, not only 

 by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial operations in the 



