Tl\e Organism and its Protoplasm 



ing the structure of organic beings should have become 

 enveloped in so much sentimental, half-mystical interest, one 

 large element in the answer soon comes into view: it is due to 

 Huxley's address. Undoubtedly what contributed most, 

 historically, to the fame of this discourse was its populariza- 

 tion of the conception that life has, in deepest reality, a 

 physical basis. Both its good fame and bad fame have 

 rested largely on this. 



I want to make it entirely clear that, important as this 

 aspect of the matter is, there is another aspect very dif- 

 ferent from this and almost as important, with which alone 

 we are concerned in this section. I refer to the conception, 

 not definitely expressed by the phrase, but obviously implied 

 in it as used both by Huxley and by nearly everybody since, 

 that "all life is one," and that tin- "seat" of it is the single 

 wonderful substance, protoplasm. Huxley's essay abounds 

 in sentences and phrases expressive of this notion: "Beast 

 and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm and polype, are all 

 composed of structural units of the same character, namely, 

 masses of protoplasm with a nucleus." ' "With such qual- 

 ifications as arise out of the fast-mentioned fact [the chlo- 

 rophyll function of green plants] it may be truly said that 

 the acts of all living things are fundamentally one." 6 

 "Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what 

 animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for proto- 

 plasm [for food], and the fact speaks volumes for the 

 general identity of that substance in all living beings." 7 



Conception of Animal Sarcode and Plant ProtopUum us 

 "Identical Stuffs" 



Since Huxley spoke (how far because he spoke it is im- 

 possible to say definitely) this notion has become a dogma, 

 having all the object ionableness of all dogma in science. 

 "Subsequently, Max Schultze and de Bary proved, after 



