6o6 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



been more completely demonstrated by Spencer.^ It is 

 distinguished by one essential quality, irritability, from all 

 known machines. But, on the other hand, the protoplast 

 as a phenomenal object can only be an instrument for 

 transmission and transformation of energy, that is, a 

 machine. How can this apparent paradox be explained? — 

 The solution is not difficult. The term machine is always 

 used to denote an instrument for transmission and trans- 

 formation of energy, the nature of which is more or less 

 perfectly known ; but in the protoplast processes occur 

 concerning which practically nothing is known. It is these 

 difficulties that form the stumbling-blocks over which 

 so many fall ; inability to appreciate the protoplast as a 

 machine is merely a phase of mysticism. The phytologist 

 that refuses to recognise the protoplast as a machine errs 

 similarly to the savage who attributes life to a watch, 

 because the mechanical processes manifested in this machine 

 are not recognised by him as identical in essence with those 

 of more simple machines with which he is acquainted. The 

 one makes an animal out of the watch, the other a god out 

 of the protoplast. 



It is not to be inferred that a form, or forms, of energy 

 differing from any at present known may not be manifested 

 in the protoplast ; that may be so, or not. All that can be 

 now said on the subject is : That the protoplast is a highly 

 complex machine, and moreover an automaton, differing 

 from all known machines, and that the rationale of its 

 functionation is for the most part unknown. Pictet (15) 

 says with perfect justice that life is a manifestation of 

 natural laws, of the same type as gravitation. But he 

 errs in stating that life is one of the constant forces of 

 nature, if he intends to denote thereby that life is a single 

 action comparable with gravitation ; this may be so, but 

 present knowledge is too insufficient to allow even con- 

 donation of such dogmatism. 



Thus the protoplast is an automaton in action, the 

 hypnoplast one at rest, and the necroplast one, the organ- 

 isation of which has suffered irreparable injury. Also, 

 ^ Loc. a'f., chaps, iv., v. 



