120 (43) 



to conceive such machinery, such apparatus, such con- 

 trivances merely molecular ? Are molecules adequate 

 to such things molecules in their blind passivity, and 

 dead, dull insensibility ? Is it to molecular agency Mr. 

 Huxley himself owes that " singular inward laboratory" 

 of which he speaks, and without which all the proto- 

 plasm in the world would be useless to him ? Surely, 

 in the presence of these manifest ideas, it is impossible 

 to attribute the single peculiar feature of protoplasm 

 its vitality, namely to mere molecular chemistry. Pro- 

 toplasm, it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen, 

 oxygen, and nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and 

 oxygen ; but the watch breaks similarly up into mere 

 brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials of 

 the watch even its chemical material if you will re- 

 place its weight, quite as accurately as the constituents 

 carbon, etc., replace the weight of the protoplasm. 

 But neither these nor those replace the vanished idea, 

 which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley 

 saw no break in the series of steps in molecular com- 

 plication ; but, though not molecular, it is difficult to 

 understand what more striding, what more absolute 

 break could be desired than the break into an idea. It 

 is of that break alone that we think in the watch ; and 

 it is of that break alone that we should think in the 

 protoplasm which, far more cunningly, far more ration- 

 ally, constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the 

 break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall 

 never explain it by molecules. 



But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to 

 account either for vital organization or the objective 

 idea of design, much more are they inadequate, in the 

 third place, to account for the subjective idea, for the 



