Scientific Sophisms. 135 



living protoplasm is not only unlike water, but 

 it is unlike dead protoplasm. Living and dead 

 protoplasm are identical only as far as chemistry 

 is concerned (if indeed so far as that) ; it is 

 therefore evident, consequently, that difference 

 between the two cannot depend on that in 

 which they are identical ; i.e., cannot depend 

 on the chemistry. 



Life, then, is something else than the result 

 of chemical or physical structure, and it is in 

 another sphere than those of physics or che- 

 mistry that its explanation must be found. It 

 is thus that, lifted high enough, the light of the 

 analogy between water and protoplasm is seen 

 to go out. Water, like its constituent elements, 

 has only chemical and physical qualities ; 

 like them, it is still inorganic. But not so in 

 protoplasm, where, together with retention of 

 the chemical and physical likeness, there is the 

 addition of the unlikeness of life, of organization, 

 and of ideas. But this addition is a world in 

 itself: a new and higher world, the world of 

 a self-realizing thought, the world of an entelechy. 

 The relation of the organic to the inorganic 

 of protoplasm dead to protoplasm alive is 

 not an analogy, but an antithesis : The anti- 

 thesis of antitheses. In it, in fact, we are in 

 presence of the one impassable gulf "that 



