6 PROTOPLASMIC^THEORY OF LIFE. 



sions of Fletcher on this point, I may quote the 

 following : 



" It is only at the instant of the cessation of tho 

 vitality of each organized tissue that these compounds 

 or reputed proximate principles are formed at that 

 instant when the power called chemical affinity succeeds 

 another power which may be called vital affinity^, and by 

 which it had been previously superseded, and common 

 chemical compounds are all that is left of that organized 

 mass into which the elements had been associated." 

 Nor is this " power called vital affinity " any essence 

 or force added to the living matter, for "irritability or 

 vitality is a property of organized or living matter, as 

 characteristic of this as inflammability of phosphorus, 

 or elasticity is of ivory." Again : " The process of secre- 

 tion, by which the ultimate ingredients of all vege- 

 table and animal compounds, whatever they may be, 

 are brought together, is perhaps an infinitely more 

 subtle and searching power than that of common 

 chemical affinity." Nevertheless, it is not anything 

 foreign to the properties of matter, for he adds, "Secre- 

 tion is a process, although not identical with, still an- 

 alogous to, common chemical affinity."* 



With such sharply defined distinctions between the 

 chemical and vital state of combination of the atoms 



* The clear expressions of Fletcher gave no countenance to any 

 ambiguity respecting the nature of his living or "irritable matter, !> 

 such as has lately been experienced respecting protoplasm by the ap- 

 plication of that word both to living and dead matter. "Chemical 

 analysis accordingly must be considered as useful in showing us, not 

 what such matter was composed of while it possessed vitality, but 

 what it is composed of afterwards " (135). And, he adds in a note, 

 "The grave-digger, in Hamlet, spoke more ' by the rule' in these 

 matters * One that was a woman,' says he, ' but, rest her soiil, she 

 is dead.' " 



