Scientific Sophisms. 1 1 9 



not only orders me to make, but makes himself. 

 Very curious all this, then. When I do what 

 he bids me do, when I say what he says that 

 if ammonia, etc., are due to chemistry, proto- 

 plasm is also due to chemistry Mr. Huxley 

 turns round and calls out that I am saying an 

 'absurdity,' which he, for his part, 'certainly 

 never said ! ' But let me make just one other 

 quotation : 



" ' When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain 

 proportion, and an electric spark is passed through them, 

 they disappear, and a quantity of water equal in weight 

 to the sum of their weights appears in their place.' 



" Now, no one in his senses will dispute that 

 this is a question of chemistry, and of nothing 

 but chemistry; but it is Mr. Huxley himself 

 who asks in immediate and direct reference 

 here : 



" ' Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, 

 water, and ammonia disappear, and in their place, under 

 the influence of pre-existing living protoplasm, an equiva- 

 lent weight of the matter of life makes its appearance ?' 



" Surely Mr. Huxley has no object whatever 

 here but to place before us the genesis of proto- 

 plasm, and surely also this genesis is a purely 

 chemical one ! The very ' influence of pre- 

 existing living protoplasm,' which pre-existcnce 



