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property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its own 

 warrant ; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns, 

 " its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God." 

 And that is the strongest argument on this whole side. 

 Throughout the entire universe, organic and inorganic, 

 thought is the controlling sovereign ; nor does matter 

 anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in thought, too, 

 that man has his patent of nobility, believes that he is 

 created in the image of God, and knows himself a free- 

 man of infinitude. 



But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we 

 have seen, a second reference that, namely, to the ex- 

 citants, if we may call them so, which determine combi- 

 nation. The modus operandi, Mr. Huxley tells us, of 

 preexisting protoplasm in determining the formation of 

 new protoplasm, is not more unintelligible than the 

 modus operandi of the electric spark in determining the 

 formation of water ; and so both, we are left to infer, 

 are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is 

 rather a favorite with Mr. Huxley. " But objectors of 

 this class," he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion 

 to those who hesitate to conclude from dead to living 

 matter, " do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strict- 

 ness, true that we know nothing about the composition 

 of any body whatever as it is." In the same neighbor- 

 hood, too, he argues that, though impotent to restore 

 to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not 

 hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, 

 and should not, consequently, any more hesitate be- 

 cause of any mere difference of form to accept the anal- 

 ysis of dead for that of living protoplasm. It is cer- 

 tainly fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance and 

 impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally 



