36 
in a rather special manner been of late years directed, and with 
which the address of the President of the British Association, 
Professor Allman, was mainly occupied. 
The problem is one of the deepest interest, and one of the 
greatest importance. What is the basis of physical life in man and 
animals? where does it reside? to what primal condition can we 
trace it? and to what extent is the basis of life the same in the 
animal as in the vegetable world? Well, they have succeeded in 
tracing it to a substance to which they have given the name of 
protoplasm, and which they assert to be the basis of all life both 
in the animal and in the vegetable world. Protoplasm is a word 
which often comes before us now, and will doubtless still more 
frequently in the future; but it is not very easy to understand 
exactly what is its meaning. When we are told that protoplasm is 
physically a clear, viscid, jelly-like substance ; that chemically it is 
very little different from the white of an egg; and that it may be 
resolved into the elements carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, 
with a slight trace of sulphur and of phosphorus, I do not think 
that we feel very much wiser, and perhaps we may succeed in 
getting a better idea of its nature by means of illustration. 
When we see any one of the more highly organised animals, 
with all its organs beautifully adapted for their respective uses— 
limbs with which to move, nerves with which to feel, mouth, 
stomach, and other organs with which to feed—we naturally say, 
these are but parts of a machine, and there must be some force, 
some principle behind, which puts all this beautiful and complex 
machinery in motion. But if you were to see a thing which could 
move, though it had no organs of any kind for progression; which 
could feel, though it was destitute of anything whatever in the 
shape of nerves; which could feed, though it had no mouth, and 
no stomach, and no alimentary organs of any kind—a thing which 
seemed to be in effect nothing more than an animated bit of jelly 
—you would naturally say, “‘ Here we have something beyond 
which we cannot get—something which seems to contain that 
principle, whatever it is, which is at the very bottom of life.” 
Well, there is such a thing, and that is precisely the descrip- 
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