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so bear them in another ; but it is not fair to convert 

 ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power. 

 Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let 

 them pass. It is not considered that, if we know noth- 

 ing about the composition of any body whatever as it 

 is, then we do know nothing, and that it is strangely 

 idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support for the 

 most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as 

 is really expected for them, to be. accepted, yet not ac- 

 cepted, they are the stultification of all logic. Is the 

 chemistry of living to be seen to be the same as the 

 chemistry of dead protoplasm, because we know noth- 

 ing about the composition of any body whatever as it 

 is ? We know perfectly well that black is white, for we 

 are absolutely ignorant of either as it is ! The form of 

 the calc-spar, which (the spar) we can analyze, we can- 

 not restore ; therefore the form of the protoplasm, which 

 we cannot analyze, has nothing to do with the matter in 

 hand ; and the chemistry of what is dead may be ac- 

 cepted as the chemistry of what is living ! In the case 

 of reasoning so irrelevant it is hardly worth while refer- 

 ing to what concerns the forms themselves ; that they 

 are totally incommensurable, that in all forms of calc- 

 spar there is no question but of what is physical, while 

 in protoplasm the change of form is introduction into 

 an entire new world. As in these illustrations, so in 

 the case immediately before us. No appeal to igno- 

 rance in regard to something else, the electric spark, 

 should be allowed to transform another ignorance, that 

 of the action of preexisting protoplasm, into knowledge, 

 here into the knowledge that the two unknown things, 

 because of non-knowledge, are perfectly analogous ! 

 That this analogy does not exist that the electric spark 



