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and men. Mr. Huxley talks feelingly of the possibility 

 of himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the 

 lobster feeding him ; but such pathos is not always ap- 

 plicable ; it is not likely that a sponge would be to the 

 stomach of Mr. Huxley any more than Mr. Huxley to 

 the stomach of a sponge. 



But a more important point is this, that the functions 

 themselves remain quite apart from the alleged convert- 

 ibility. We can neither acquire the functions of what 

 we eat, nor impart our functions to what eats us. We 

 shall not come to fly by feeding on vultures, nor they to 

 speak by feeding on us. No possible manure of hu- 

 man brains will enable a corn-field to reason. But if 

 functions are inconvertible, the convertibility of the pro- 

 toplasm is idle. In this inconvertibility, indeed, functions 

 will be seen to be independent of mere chemical compo- 

 sition. And that is the truth : for functions there is more 

 required than either chemistry or physics. 



It is to be acknowledged to notice one other inci- 

 dental suggestion, for the sake of completeness, and by 

 way of transition to the final consideration of possible 

 objections that Mr. Huxley would be very much as- 

 sisted in his identification of differences, were but the 

 theories of the molecularists, on the one hand, and of 

 Mr. Darwin, on the other, once for all established. The 

 three modes of theorizing indicated, indeed, are not 

 without a tendency to approach one another ; and it is 

 precisely their union that would secure a definitive tri- 

 umph for the doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as 

 we have seen though what he desiderates is an auto- 

 plastic living matter that, produced by ordinary chem- 

 ical processes, is yet capable of continuing and develop- 

 ing itself into new and higher forms still begins with 



