"DIRECTIVITY" A WITNESS OF MIND 73 



not-living matter are such as to justify the assumption 

 that the forces at work in the one are different from 

 those to be met with in the other ".^ Is that true? An 

 obvious difference is that the forces in dead protoplasm 

 are excited by microbes which cause putrefaction. They 

 play no similar part in a living organism, though other 

 kinds of microbes can act pathologically. Again, the 

 forces of protoplasm bring about the formation of starch, 

 sugar, oil and hundreds of other substances in living 

 vegetable cells. The forces of dead protoplasm do no 

 such work, but destruction only. They may be, broadly 

 speaking, " chemical " or " physical " in both, but the 

 above statement of Huxley's requires demonstration m 

 details. Living protoplasm transforms energy from food 

 and utilises it in various ways. Whatever forces may 

 be at work in dead protoplasm nothing of the kind is 

 possible. 



Prof. Dolbear commits himself still further by com- 

 paring an electrical machine with a living being. He 

 observes that all the parts are made separately and then 

 put together, yet no electricity appears ; but " if the 

 proper kind of energy is spent upon it, it at once be- 

 comes electrified, and electrical energy may now be got 

 from it in indefinite quantity, dependent wholly upon 

 the proper turning of the crank. , . . One might speak 

 of the whole machine as an organism, its wood and glass 

 and brass as its molecular composition, its function 

 depending upon each of these being in its appropriate 

 place, and nothing more. It can only exercise that 

 function when energy of the proper sort is turned into 

 it." 2 



Precisely so, but what Prof. Dolbear does not see, is 



^ op. cit., p. 359. ^Op. cit., p. 295. 



