WHA T IS PRO TOPLASM ? 2 1 



life. No anatomical investigation is necessary to enable us 

 to detect this substance. Every beast, fowl, reptile, worm, 

 or polyp that we see is protoplasm. Everything that lives 

 or has lived is protoplasm, variously modified.* 



Mr. Huxley seems to maintain that protoplasm may be 

 killed and dried, roasted and boiled, or otherwise altered, 

 and yet remain protoplasm ; but his " protoplasm" is after all 

 only albuminoid or protein matter. t Huxley says lobster- 

 protoplasm may be converted into human protoplasm, and 

 the latter again turned into living lobster. But the statement 

 is incorrect; because, in the process of assimilation "pro- 

 toplasm" is entirely disintegrated, and is not converted into 

 the new tissue in the form of protoplasm at all ; and he 

 must permit me to remark that sheep cannot be transub- 

 stantiated into man, even by " subtle influences," nor can 

 dead protoplasm be converted into living protoplasm, or a 

 dead sheep into a living man. And what is gained by calling 

 the matter of dead roast mutton and of a living growing sheep 

 by the same name ? If the last is the physical basis of life one 

 does not see how the first can be so too, unless roast mutton 

 and living sheep are identical ; but surely Mr. Huxley does 

 not really mean to assert this. 



It is remarkable that Huxley himself, some sixteen years 



* The term "variously modified" perhaps includes the terms 

 living and dead } and, according to Mr. Huxley, expresses with sufficient 

 exactness the difference between the living and dead states. 



+ Mr. Huxley says, "all protoplasm is proteinaceous ; or, as the 

 white or albumen of an egg is one of the commonest examples of a 

 nearly pure protein matter, we may say that all living matter is more or 

 less albuminoid." If the white of an egg is living matter, why not its 

 shell ? 



