ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 113 



living matter which gave rise to it ? What better philo- 

 sophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And 

 why should "vitality" hope for a better fate than the 

 other "itys" which have disappeared since Martinus 

 Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat- 

 jack by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and 

 scorned the "materialism" of those who explained the 

 turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by 

 the draught of the chimney. 



If scientific language is to possess a definite and con- 

 stant signification whenever it is employed, it seems to 

 me that we are logically bound to apply to the proto- 

 plasm, or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as 

 those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the 

 phsenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so 

 are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its 

 properties. 



If the properties of water may be properly said to 

 result from the nature and disposition of its component 

 molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing 

 to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the 

 nature and disposition of its molecules. 



But I bid you beware that, in accepting these con- 

 clusions, you are placing your feet on the first rung of a 

 ladder which, in most people's estimation, is the reverse 

 of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may 

 seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of 

 a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their 

 protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of 

 the matter of which they are composed. But if, as I* 

 have endeavoured to prove to you, their protoplasm is 

 essentially identical with, and most readily converted 

 into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halt- 

 ing-place between the admission that such is the case, 



