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to refer to the present conditions of microscopic sci- 

 ence in general as well as in particular, and to demur 

 to the erection of its dicta, constituted as they yet are, 

 into established columns and buttresses in support of 

 any theory of life, material or other. 



The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it 

 is also the youngest. In its manipulations the slightest 

 change may operate as a destructive drought, or an 

 equally destructive deluge. Its very tools may posi- 

 tively create the structure it actually examines. The 

 present state of the science, and what warrant it gives 

 Mr. Huxley to dogmatize on protoplasm, we may under- 

 stand from this avowal of Kiihne's : " To-day we be- 

 lieve that we see" such or such fact, " but know not 

 that further improvements in the means of observation 

 will not reveal what is assumed for certainty to be only 

 illusion." With such authority to lean on and it is the 

 highest we can have we may be allowed to entertain 

 the conjecture, that it is just possible that some certain- 

 ties, even of Mr. Huxley, may yet reveal themselves as 

 illusions. 



But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built 

 on it, we are not confined to a reference to the imper- 

 fections involved in the very nature and epoch of the 

 science itself in general. With yet greater assurance 

 of carrying conviction with us, we may point in partic- 

 ular to the actual opinions of its present professors. 

 We have seen already, in the consideration premised, 

 that Mr. Huxley's hypothesis of a protoplasm matter is 

 unsupported, even by the most innovating Germans, 

 who as yet will not advance, the most advanced of them, 

 beyond a protoplasm-cell ; and that his whole argument 

 is thus sapped in advance. But what threatens more 



