ioo ROAST AND BOILED PROTOPLASM. 



alive, protoplasms. Huxley makes no difference between 

 dead and living and roasted matter, and he confuses together 

 the living thing, the stuff upon which it feeds, and the things 

 formed by it, or which result from its death. A muscle is 

 protoplasm ; nerve is protoplasm \ a limb is protoplasm ; 

 the whole body is protoplasm, and of course bone, hair, 

 shell, &c., are as much "the physical basis of life" as 

 albuminous matter and roast mutton. But surely it would 

 be less incorrect to speak of such " protoplasms " as the 

 physical basis of death or the physical basis of roast, than to 

 call dead and roasted matter the physical basis of life. A 

 microscope is unnecessary to enable us to detect this proto- 

 plasm. Every beast, fowl, reptile, worm, or polype that we 

 see is protoplasm. Everything that lives or has lived is pro- 

 toplasm, variously modified.* 



Mr. Huxley maintains 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, f Huxley says lobster-proto- 

 plasm 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 what was 

 once "protoplasm" is entirely disintegrated, and is not 



* The term "variously modified " perhaps includes both the states 

 understood by the words living and dead, and, according to Mr. Huxley, 

 expresses with the exactness of "materialistic terminology" the dif- 

 ference between the living and dead states. 



f 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 



