Io8 LIFE. 



them ? It is indeed very desirable to bring us face to face 

 with " facts," but it is astonishing how many grand facts of 

 the profoundest significance are slowly resolved into harm- 

 less fictions of the imagination condensed and duly con- 

 centrated into very strong language to suit the dictates of 

 a party determined to make people think in one way only, 

 or to prevent them from thinking at all. But the autho- 

 ritative language of opponents need not deter us from 

 entering upon the discussion of a matter which is of 

 more than ordinary interest to all, and I shall venture to 

 draw certain conclusions concerning the probable nature of 

 life ; although I can only receive indirect assistance from 

 observation and experiment. 



There is in living matter nothing which can be called a 

 mechanism, nothing in which structure can be discerned. 

 A little transparent colourless material is the seat of these 

 marvellous powers or properties by which the form, struc- 

 ture, and function of the tissues and organs of all living 

 things are determined. But this transparent material pos- 

 sesses a remarkable power of movement, which has been 

 already referred to (see p. 39). It may thus transport 

 itself long distances, and extend itself so as to get through 

 pores, holes, and canals too minute to be seen even with 

 the aid of very high powers. There are creatures of 

 exquisite tenuity which are capable of climbing through 

 fluids and probably through the air itself creatures which 

 climb without muscles, nerves or limbs creatures with 

 no mechanism, having no structure, capable when sus- 

 pended in the medium in which they live, of extend- 

 ing any one part of the pulpy matter of which they 



