AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 21 



ever, that Mr Huxley, after having exerted all his strength in 

 his first part to throw us into " the materialistic slough," by 

 clear necessity of knowledge, only calls to us, in his second part, 

 cheerily, as it were, to come out of this slough again, on the some- 

 what obscure necessity of ignorance. This, then, is but a lop-sided 

 balance, where a scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly 

 to raise its well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr Huxley, in 

 fact, possesses no remedy for materialism but what lies in the 

 expression that, while he knows not what matter is in itself, he 

 certainly knows that causality is but contingent succession; 

 and thus, like the so-called " philosophy " of the Revulsion, Mr 

 Huxley would only mock us into the intensest dogmatism on 

 the one side by a fallacious reference to the intensest scepticism 

 on the other. 



The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr Huxley's 

 argument for materialism, but say what is required, at the same 

 time, on his alleged argument which is merely the imaginary, 

 or imaginative, impregnation of ignorance against it* 



Following Mr Huxley's own steps in his essay, the course of 

 his positions will be found to run, in summary, thus : 



What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that there is 

 one kind of matter common to all living beings, and it is named 

 protoplasm. No doubt it may appear at first sight that, in the 

 various kinds of living beings, we have only difference before us, 

 as in the lichen on the rock and the painter that paints it, the 

 microscopic animalcule or fungus and the Finner whale or 

 Indian fig the flower in the hair of a girl and the blood in her 

 veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and all other diver- 

 sities, there really exists a threefold unity : a unity of faculty, a 

 unity of form, and a unity of substance. 



On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty, power, 

 the action exhibited, there are but three categories of human 

 activity contractility, alimentation, and reproduction ; and 

 there are no fewer for the lower forms of life, whether animal 

 or vegetable. In the nettle, for instance, we find the woody- 

 case of its sting lined by a granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is 

 possessed of contractility. But in this respect that is, in the 

 possession of contractile substance other plants are as the 

 nettle, and all animals are as plants. Protoplasm for the 

 nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm is common to the whole 

 of them. The difference, in short, between the powers of the 



* Mr Huxley's own extraordinary charge of " utter misrepresentation " in the 

 above reference, has necessitated (in this edition) the present Part IL, in express 

 consideration of what Mr Huxley says " against " materialism. This essay is 

 thus now quite too large, as compared with the one that gave rise to it if quite 

 too small on the other hand, for the matter (especially philosophical), it attempts 

 in the end to discuss a matter which has interest, perhaps, beyond Mr Huxley'a 

 reference. 



