116 (44) 



parts are dependent on the whole, and the whole on 

 the parts ; which has its activity and raison d'ttre within 

 which manifests all the powers which we have described 

 water to want ; and which requires for its continuance 

 conditions of which water is independent. It is only 

 so far as organization and life are concerned, how- 

 ever, that the cell is thus different from water. Chemi- 

 cally and physically, as said, it can show with it quality 

 for quality. How strangely Mr. Huxley's deliverances 

 show beside these facts ! He can " see no break in the 

 series of steps in molecular complication ;" but, glar- 

 ingly obvious, there is a step added that is not molecu- 

 lar at all, and that has its supporting conditions com- 

 pletely elsewhere. The molecules are as fully accounted 

 for in protoplasm as in water ; but the sum of qualities, 

 thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in the 

 former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to 

 the molecules as molecules, but to the form into which 

 they are thrown, and the force that makes that form 

 one. When the chemical elements are brought together, 

 Mr. Huxley says, protoplasm is formed, " and this pro- 

 toplasm exhibits the phenomena of life j" but he ought 

 to have added that these phenomena are themselves 

 added to the phenomena for which all that relates to 

 chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by 

 reason of some other determinant. New consequents 

 necessarily demand new antecedents. "We think fit 

 to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydro- 

 gen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers 

 and activities of these substances as the properties of 

 the matter of which they are composed." That, doubt- 

 less, is true, we say ; but such statements do not ex- 

 haust the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen, 



