DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY. 79 



begins a series of orderly changes, very wonderful. 

 During the time that the matter lives, its elements are 

 probably arranged and re-arranged many times, the 

 proportion of some being reduced, and that of others 

 increased, so as to prepare for the formation of mole- 

 cules of great complexity as regards arrangement, 

 though composed of very few elements " (" Prot.," 3rd 

 edit., p. 280). 



Professor Wyville Thompson, who considers Beale's 

 view as open to insuperable objections, thinks it more 

 probable that 



" Protoplasm, the substance of which is endowed with peculiar 

 vital properties, has always the same composition, and that it 

 acts simply by catalysis, inducing, under certain known laws, 

 decomposition and recombination in compounds which are sub- 

 jected to its influence, without itself undergoing any change, 

 absorbing the nascent products of combination and decomposi- 

 tion, and recombining them and reserving them with reference 

 to the development or maintenance of the organ to which it 

 gives its life" ("Nature," May, 1871). 



To this I object that such actions imply infinitely 

 more than catalysis, which, in fact, is a purely chemi- 

 cal operation requiring a definite intermediate com- 

 pound to be formed by double decomposition, and this 

 resolved again, as is the case in inorganic chemical 

 catalytic processes, such as the manufacture of sul- 

 phuric acid and of chlorine. And if a similar process, 

 not as yet chemically explained, takes place with the 

 nitrogenous diastase in the conversion of starch into 

 sugar, still we have no reason to suppose the attitude 

 of the molecules to each other less definite. But dias- 

 tase possesses no power of self-renewal or growth, or 



