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the faintest conception of the nature of the changes which must have taken 

 place when the first living thing was formed. With regard to the question of 

 complexity and simplicity, of which a good deal has been said, I will just offer 

 a few remarks, and will then sit down. It seems to me to have been assumed 

 in a most extraordinary way that some forms of living matter are extremely 

 simple and that others are extremely complex. I should like to ask what is 

 the meaning attached to these terms " simplicity " and " complexity," when 

 applied to living matter ] Let us take the monera, said to be among the 

 simplest forms of living matter with which we are acquainted. All we can 

 see is clear, colourless, transparent, structureless, semifluid matter. Where 

 is the evidence that the composition of this is more simple than that of the 

 most complex living matter in existence ? Take, for example, the highest 

 form of living matter we know the living matter which forms part of the 

 brain cells of man himself, for I suppose we cannot conceive anything much 

 higher. If we were to assume gradations of complexity and different degrees of 

 superiority, we might go as far as to suggest that at any rate the highest and 

 most complex living matter is to be found in the grey matter constituting the 

 outer part of the human brain. But what is the fact ? The matter we find 

 there is no more complex than the living matter of the simplest monad, as far, 

 at least, as we know. If we take this brain matter and examine it, we find 

 that we can resolve it into certain organic substances, closely allied to the 

 albuminous material which Professor Huxley and others call protoplasm, 

 although they are not able to define precisely what they mean by the term. 

 (Hear, hear.) They are unable to tell us in what way protoplasm differs 

 from albumen, and muscle tissue, and a thousand other things. They 

 simply make use of a name almost without a meaning. Well, the highest 

 conceivable form of living matter, as far as we know, closely accords in its 

 composition with the lowest form of living matter ; and, as far as regards 

 structure, if we examine that which comes from the highest organism, 

 and that which is concerned in the formation of the lowest, no difference 

 whatever can be distinguished. It is not that one is more complicated, or 

 exhibits a structure different from the other. There is no structure in either. 

 Both are perfectly clear, transparent, and structureless, and yet one is con- 

 cerned in the performance of certain functions and offices, while the other is 

 concerned in the performance of totally different functions and offices. Are 

 we, then, to believe that the difference in the functions discharged is due 

 merely to the chemical properties of the substances of which the living matter 

 is composed ? We cannot do this, because, when we coine to analyse the 

 two different kinds of living matter, we find in the material which results 

 from their death the same elements. And, if the elements are not in pre- 

 cisely the same amounts or in the same proportions to one another, the 

 difference which may exist in the composition bears no relation and has no 

 reference that can be discovered, either to the difference in action or to the 

 different structures which may be evolved from the two different forms of 

 living matter. Therefore the terms " simplicity " and " complexity " seem 

 to me to be totally inadmissible, and I venture to think that not one 



