34 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



for example, " It is more than probable that when the vegetable 

 world is thoroughly explored we shall find all plants in posses- 

 sion of the same powers." When a conclusion is decidedly 

 announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as here, that 

 the premises are still to collect. " So far" he says again, " as 

 the conditions of the manifestations of the phenomena of con- 

 tractility have yet, been studied." Now, such a so far need not 

 be very far; and we may confess in passing, that from Mr 

 Huxley the phrase, " the conditions of the manifestations of the 

 phenomena" grates. We hear again that it is " the rule rather 

 than the exception," or that "weighty authorities have suggested" 

 that such and such things " probably occur," or, while con- 

 templating the nettle-sting, that such "possible complexity" in 

 other cases " dawns upon one." On other occasions he expresses 

 himself to the effect that " perhaps it would not yet be safe to 

 say that all forms," etc. Nay, not only does he directly say that 

 "it is by no means his intention to suggest that there is no 

 difference between the lowest plant and the highest, or between 

 plants and animals." but he directly proves what he says, for 

 he demonstrates in plants and animals an essential difference of 

 power. Plants can assimilate inorganic matters, animals can not, 

 etc. Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his 

 own " basis " from beneath his own feet. After telling us that 

 all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 

 and nitrogen " in very complex union," he continues, " To this 

 complex combination, the nature of which has never been determined 

 with exactness, the name of protein has been applied." This, 

 plainly, is an identification, on Mr Huxley's own part, of proto- 

 plasm and protein; and what is said of the one being necessarily 

 true of the other, it follows that Mr Huxley admits the nature 

 of protoplasm never to have been determined with exactness, 

 and that, even in his eyes, the Us is still sub judice. This admis- 

 sion is strengthened by the words, too, " If we use this term " 

 (protein) " with such caution as may properly arise out of oiir 

 comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands ; " which 

 entitle us to demand, in consequence " of our comparative 

 ignorance of the things for which it stands," " caution " in the 

 use of the term protoplasm. In such a state of the case we 

 cannot wonder that Mr Huxley's own conclusion here is : There- 

 fore " all living matter is more or less albuminoid." All living 

 matter is more or less albuminoid ! That, indeed, is the single 

 conclusion of Mr Huxley's whole industry ; but it is a conclusion 

 that, far from requiring the intervention of protoplasm, had 

 been reached long before the word itself had been, in this con- 

 nection, used. 



It is in this way, then, that Mr Huxley can be adduced in 

 refutation of himself; and I think his resort to an epigram of 



