142 Protoplasm. 



that there is an end of the argument if all foods and all 

 feeders are essentially identical both with themselves and 

 with each other. The facts of the case, however, I be- 

 lieve to be too well known to require a single word here 

 on my part. It is not long since Mr. Huxley himself 

 pointed out the great difference between the foods of 

 plants and the foods of animals ; and the reader may be 

 safely left to think for himself of ruminantia and car- 

 niTJora, of soft bills and hard bills, of molluscs and men. 

 Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility of himself 

 feeding the lobster quite as much as of the lobster feeding 

 him ; but such pathos is not always applicable : it is not 

 likely that a sponge would be to the stomach of Mr. 

 Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley would be to the 

 stomach of a sponge. 



" But a more important point is this, that the 

 functions themselves remain quite apart from 

 the alleged convertibility. We can neither 

 acquire the functions of what we eat, nor impart 

 our functions to what eats us. We shall not 

 come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they 

 to speak by feeding on us. No possible manure 

 of human brains will enable a corn-field to 

 reason. But if functions are inconvertible, the 

 convertibility of protoplasm is idle. In this 

 inconvertibility, indeed, functions will be seen 

 to be independent of mere chemical composition. 

 And that is the truth : for function there is 

 more required than either chemistiy or physics." 1 



1 Dr. Stirling : " As Regards Protoplasm," p. 50. 



