10 PREFACE. 



life-matter, as due to chemistry a statement which Mr Huxley 

 not only orders me to make, but makes himself. Very curious all 

 this, then. When I do what he bids me do, when I say what he 

 says that if ammonia, etc., are due to chemistry, protoplasm is 

 also due to chemistry Mr Huxley turns round and calls out 

 that I am saying an "absurdity," which he, for his part, 

 " certainly never said ! " But let me make just one other 

 quotation : 



" When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain propor- 

 tion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they dis- 

 appear, and a quantity of water equal in weight to the sum of 

 their weights appears in their place." 



Now, no one in his senses will dispute that this is a question 

 of chemistry, and of nothing but chemistry ; but it is Mr Huxley 

 himself who asks in immediate and direct reference here : 



" Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, 

 and ammonia disappear, and in their place, under the influence 

 of pre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the 

 matter of life makes its appearance ?" 



Surely Mr Huxley has no object whatever here but to place 

 before us the genesis of protoplasm, and surely also this genesis 

 is a purely chemical one 1 The very " influence of pre-existing 

 living protoplasm," which pre-existence could not itself exist for 

 the benefit of the first protoplasm that came into existence, is 

 asserted to be in precisely the same case with reference to the 

 one process as that of the electric spark with reference to the 

 other. And yet, in the teeth of such passages, Mr Huxley feels 

 himself at liberty to say now, " statement number (2) is, in my 

 judgment, absurd, and certainly I have never said anything resem- 

 bling it" It is a pity to see a man in the position of Mr Huxley 

 so strangely forget himself! 



Mr Huxley's next charge of " utter misrepresentation " on my 

 part is, that I have talked of him as founding materialism, while 

 it was " one great object" with him to resist it ! I have been quite 

 explicit everywhere as to Mr Huxley's double issue ; but in the 

 passage he refers to, I have only his first issue in consideration, 

 as is the pitch of my essay in its first form generally indeed* 

 and as is perfectly well known to Mr Huxley. To attempt to 

 hide his first issue from himself, then, he can hide it from nobody 

 elge by thrusting his head into the second, is but the sagacity 

 of the ostrich. Seeing, however, that he resents my want of 



