ML] ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. 115 



so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic 

 acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure 

 cannot go on for ever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau de 

 chagrin differs from Balzac s in its capacity of being repaired, 

 and brought back to its full size, after every exertion. 



For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual 

 worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, 

 conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm 

 and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital 

 processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be 

 distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at 

 the beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the 

 substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching 

 it back to its original size. Now 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 

 process of cooking. 



But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered 

 it incompetent to resume its old functions as matter of life. A 

 singular inward laboratory, which I possess, will dissolve a certain 

 portion of the modified protoplasm ; the solution so formed will 

 pass into my veins ; and the subtle influences to which it will 

 then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into living- 

 protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. 



Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I 

 might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean 

 would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. 

 And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo ship 

 wreck, the Crustacea might, and probably would, return the compli 

 ment, and demonstrate our common nature, by turning my proto 

 plasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to be had, I 

 might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the 

 protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no 

 more trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, 

 than that of the lobster. 



