PHYSICAL BASIS GF LIFE. 



their search after unity. Plants and worms and men are 

 all protoplasm, and protoplasm is albuminous matter, and 

 albuminous matter consists of four elements, and these four 

 elements possess certain properties, by which properties all 

 differences between plants and worms and men are to be 

 accounted for. Although Huxley would probably admit 

 that a worm was not a man, he would tell us that by " subtle 

 influences" the one thing might be easily converted into the 

 other, and not by such nonsensical fictions as "vitality," 

 which can neither be weighed, measured, nor conceived.* 



* But this is not the first time Mr. Huxley has indulged in adroit 

 word-tricks and inapposite illustrations. After referring to the 

 anatomy of the horse, he says, in his "Lectures to Working Men," 

 page II : "Hitherto we have, as it were, been looking at a steam- 

 engine with the fires out, and nothing in the boiler ( ! ) but the body of 

 the living animal is a beautifully-formed machine" And it would be 

 easy to point out in many of his writings, vague remarks of the same 

 sort with similes, calculated rather to mislead than to assist the judgment 

 of students. Take, for example, his far-fetched observations in the first 

 number of the "Academy," page 13, about the kitchen clock, which 

 cries "cuckoo," and shows the phases of the moon, and the death- 

 watch machine, "a learned and intelligent student of its works," ticking 

 like the clock in the clock case. We are told to "substitute 'cosmic 

 vapour ' for ' clock, ' and ' molecules ' for ' works, ' and the application 

 of the argument is obvious." (!) The argument relates to the "forces 

 possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the 

 universe was composed," by the mutual interaction of which forces the 

 whole world living and not living has resulted. " If this be true" (doubt- 

 fully suggests the Professor) " it is no less certain that the existing world 

 lay, potientially, in the cosmic vapour ; and that a sufficient intelligence 

 could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that 

 vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, 

 with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour 

 of the breath in a cold winter's day.". (!) These remarks are printed 

 under the heading "SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY." 



C 



