its own molecules as the steam-engine, in its mech- 

 anism, to its own wood and iron. It were indeed as ra- 

 tional to say that there is no principle concerned in a 

 steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular 

 forces, as to make this assertion of organized matter. 

 Still there are degrees in organization, and the highest 

 forms of life are widely different from the lowest. De- 

 grees similar we see even in the inorganic world. The 

 persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of. the 

 solar system, in some such proportion, perhaps, as the 

 rhizopod to man. In protoplasm, even the lowest, then, 

 but much more conspicuously in the highest, there is, 

 in addition to the molecular force, another force unsig- 

 nalized by Mr. Huxley the force of vital organization. 

 But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea ; 

 and this I would point to as a second form of the addi- 

 tion to the chemistry and physics of protoplasm. We 

 have just seen, it is true, that an idea may be found in 

 inorganic matter, as in the solar and sidereal systems 

 generally. But the idea in organized matter is not one 

 operative, so to speak, from without : it is one operative 

 from within, and in an infinitely more intimate and per- 

 vading manner. The units that form the complement 

 of an inorganic system are but independently and ex- 

 ternally in place, like units in a procession : but in what 

 is organized there is no individual that is not sublated 

 into the unity of the single life. This is so even, in pro- 

 toplasm. Mr. Huxley, it is true, desiderates, as result 

 of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in mass, 

 as it were in the web, to which he has only to resort for 

 cuttings and cuttings in order to produce, by aggrega- 

 tion, what organized individual he pleases. But the 

 facts are not so : we cannot have protoplasm in the 



