NECESSARY BELIEFS. 65 



176.) It is now conceded even by Huxley that life 

 exists only in the matter of the bioplasts. Where 

 life came from, he says, we do not know ; but we do 

 know, that, so far as human observation has extended, 

 life has been found only in connection with bioplasm. 

 Therefore, in the definition of life in physical organ- 

 ism, bioplasm must be prominently mentioned. 



Why not say that life in physical organisms is the 

 power which co-ordinates the movements of the bio- 

 plasts? Because there are individual animalcules 

 which have life, and yet consist apparently not of 

 many bioplasts, but of a single naked throbbing 

 mass of this germinal matter. When such an ani- 

 mal wishes to digest its food, it sometimes thrusts 

 the nutriment into its side, making a stomach there, 

 which absorbs the pabulum ; and then the debris is 

 removed, and the animal is whole again. This pro- 

 cedure evidently involves a co-ordination of move- 

 ments ; and we say that the action by which such an 

 animalcule digests its food is not the result of chemi- 

 cal and mechanical forces merely, but of life which 

 directs them, or of a power which co-ordinates the 

 throbbing of that single mass of bioplasm of which 

 the animalcule may consist. There is a co-ordination 

 there such that a process essential to the preservation 

 of the animal is carried through triumphantly ; and 

 the chemical and physical forces, as we have seen in 

 previous lectures, do not account for that co-ordi- 

 nation. Something must account for it ; and that 

 something we call life. The power is there, for we 

 see its effects. But when we rise to the more com- 





