AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 23 



logical halting-place between this conclusion and the further 

 and final one: That all vital action whatever, intellectual 

 included, is but the result of the molecular forces of the pro- 

 toplasm which displays it. 



These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, at least fairly 

 to represent Mr Huxley's relative deliverances, and, conse- 

 quently, as I may be allowed to explain again, the only 

 important while much the larger part of the whole essay. 

 Mr Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty paragraphs to our 

 physiological immersion in the "materialistic slough," grants 

 but one-and-twenty towards our philosophical escape from it ; 

 the fifty besides being, so to speak, in reality the wind, and the 

 one-and-twenty only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in 

 effect, is no more than this, that matter being known not in itself 

 but only in its qualities, and cause and effect not in their nexus, but 

 only in their sequence, matter may be spirit or spirit matter, cause 

 effect or effect cause in short, for aught that Mr Huxley more 

 than phenomenally knows, this may be that or that this, first 

 second, or second first, but the conclusion shall be this, that he 

 will lay out all our knowledge materially, and we may lay out all 

 our ignorance immaterially if we will. Which reasoning and 

 conclusion, I may merely remark, come precisely to this : That 

 Mr Huxley who, hoping yet to see each object (a pin, say) not 

 in its qualities but in itself, still, consistently antithetic, cannot 

 believe in the extinction of fire by water or of life by the rope, 

 for any reason or for any necessity that lies in the nature of the 

 case, but simply for the habit of the thing has not yet put 

 himself at home with the metaphysical categories of substance 

 and causality ; thanks, perhaps, to those guides of his whom we, 

 the amusing Britons that we are, bravely proclaim " the foremost 

 thinkers of the day !"* 



The matter and manner of the whole essay are now fairly 

 before us, and I think that, with the approbation of the reader, 

 its procedure, generally, may be described as an attempt to 

 establish, not by any complete and systematic induction, but by 

 a variety of partial and illustrative assertions, two propositions. 

 Of these propositions the first is, That all animal and vegetable 

 organisms are essentially alike in power, in form, and in sub- 

 stance ; and the second, That all vital and intellectual functions 

 are the properties of the molecular disposition and changes of 

 the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various animals 

 and vegetables consist. In both propositions, the agent of 

 proof is this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm. 

 For the first proposition, all animal and vegetable organisms 

 shall be identified in protoplasm ; and for the second, a simple 



* See note page 21. 



