21 



torial. Instead of persuading people to consider and admire 

 natural phenomena, and to think over the wonders around 

 them, some scientific authorities think to spread their views, 

 by threatening to place all who do not agree with them in a 

 class, in which nobody likes to be included, however large it 

 may be. 



Professor Huxley, with that curious partiality for contra- 

 dictory statements which distinguishes many of his utter- 

 ances, condemns in one place the idea of an "indivisible 

 unitary archseus dominating from its central seat the parts of 

 the organism," and in another tells us that "the body is a 

 machine of the nature of an army." Every army to be of 

 any use must, of course, be under a head of some kind or 

 other, but Mr. Huxley's army has no general or indivisible 

 unitary archseus of any kind. Each soldier is, I suppose, to 

 govern himself under inexorable laws enacted when everything 

 was in the state of primitive nebulosity. The army of Professor 

 Huxley is, as we shall see, the most marvellous of all nebulous 

 machinery yet discovered by materialists. 



Now let us admit for a moment that the body may be com- 

 pared to a " machine " of the nature of an army. How does 

 the comparison help us to understand the nature of the body ? 

 For is not the army actually composed of a number of 

 machines of the very same kind as that body machine which 

 is said to be like it ? What, therefore, can be gained by the 

 comparison ? Obviously nothing would be gained by telling 

 people who wanted to learn about the nature of a sheep 

 that it was like a flock of sheep. But the body is a machine 

 of the nature of an army, and the microcosm contains the 

 macrocosm, and, therefore, possibly the body, according to 

 Huxleyan logic, contains the army. But I mav be wrong, for 

 it is not an army, but a machine of the nature of an army. 

 We have machines of the nature of a watch, machines of the 

 nature of a windmill, and machines of other natures, but the 

 machine which the body is like, is of the nature of an army. 

 But this last "machine" is essentially different from all the 

 other machines because it is composed of living men while 

 machines in general consist of non-living materials. In 

 short, Professor Huxley uses the word machine just as he 

 uses the word protoplasm in speaking of that which is living 

 as well as of that which is not living ! 



But Mr. Huxley's " machine of the nature of an army " 

 shall be further examined. It will be found to be very 

 peculiar indeed, whether it is compared with machines or 

 with armies. The army of Professor Huxley would not be 

 recognised as an army by any general, or by any soldier in 



