(47) IX 9 



web, but the piece. There is as yet no matter of life ; 

 there are still cells of life. It is no shred of protoplasm 

 no spoonful or toothpickful that can be recognized 

 as adequate to the function and the name. Such shred 

 may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it 

 dies. In the smallest, lowest protoplasm cell, then, we 

 have this rational unity of a complement of individuals 

 that only are for the whole and exist in the whole. 

 This is an idea, therefore; this is design : the organized 

 concert of many to a single common purpose. The 

 rudest savage that should, as in Paley's illustration, 

 find a watch, and should observe the various contrivan- 

 ces all controlled by the single end in view, would be 

 obliged to acknowledge though in his own way that 

 what he had before him was no mere physical, no mere 

 molecular product. So in protoplasm : even from the 

 first, but, quite undeniably, in the completed organiza- 

 tion at last, which alone it was there to produce ; for a 

 single idea has been its one manifestation throughout. 

 And in what machinery does it not at length issue ? 

 Was it molecular powers that invented a respiration 

 that perforated the posterior ear to give a balance of 

 air that compensated the fenesfra ovalis by a fenestra 

 rotunda that placed in the auricular sacs those otolithes, 

 those express stones for hearing ? Such machinery ! 

 The chorda tendinece are to the valves of the heart ex- 

 actly adjusted check-strings ; and the contractile 

 columna carnecz are set in, under contraction and ex- 

 pansion, to equalize their length to their office. Mem- 

 branes, rods, and liquids it required the express ex- 

 periment of man to make good the fact that the 

 inventor of the ear had availed himself of the most 

 perfect apparatus possible for his purpose. And are we 



