22 



existence. This remarkable army has " its losses made good 

 by recruits born in camp." This is an excellent idea for in- 

 creasing the number of soldiers, and may be recommended to 

 the War Office. 



In the body " each cell is a soldier," says Mr. Huxley. If 

 so, I suppose each cell has the power of acting, of displaying 

 intelligence, of obeying the word of command, and carrying 

 out the orders of the general. In a few sentences further on, 

 as well as in many papers he has written, he deprecates this 

 view altogether, and talks about vital actions being " nothing 

 but changes of place of particles of matter," and he looks 

 forward to " the analysis of the living protoplasm itself into 

 a molecular mechanism." The body he regards as " a syn- 

 thesis of innumerable physiological elements," each of which 

 may be described "as protoplasm susceptible of structural 

 metamorphosis and functional metabolism." 



After all our work, all our chemical, physical, and micro- 

 scopical investigation after all that has been gained by 

 most minute and careful anatomical investigation carried on 

 for many years, Mr. Huxley comes forward, and in the 

 most public manner possible, tells the world that ,the body 

 is not like a watch, or a hydraulic apparatus, but an 

 army but such an army as never has existed and never 

 could exist an army not to be conceived by the imagina- 

 tion, an army beyond all powers of reasonable conjecture; 

 an army, the fighting power of which would be destroyed 

 not only by the birth of its recruits, but by the necessary 

 phenomena which would precede that interesting event. 

 But, alas, this is not all, for this army of Professor Huxley's, 

 strange to say, is unfit to survive, for does he not tell us that 

 it is certain of defeat in the long run ! Professor Huxley's 

 army is not an army at all, but only an imaginary hetero- 

 geneous collection of nebulous impossibilities. It is scarcely 

 credible that such suggestions as those I have criticised could 

 be seriously made in the presence of hundreds of representa- 

 tive medical and scientific men from all parts of the world. 

 You will, however, find them on p. 99 of vol. i., of the 

 " Transactions of the International Medical Congress." 



And what end is served by such comparisons ? Are we 

 taught anything by such incongruous metaphors ? In what 

 particular is any living thing like a watch, or a hydraulic 

 apparatus, or an army ? There is not one of the ridiculous 

 comparisons which have been made which helps any one to 

 form an accurate notion of the nature of any living thing in 

 existence. Half the utterances of this kind serve but to con- 

 fuse and lead the mind away from the truth about life and 



