3# AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



For this is Mr Huxley's second proposition, namely, That all 

 vital and intellectual functions are but the properties of the 

 molecular disposition and changes of the material basis (proto- 

 plasm) of which the various animals and vegetables consist. 

 With the conclusions now before us, it is evident that to enter 

 at all on this part of Mr Huxley's argumentation is, so far as we 

 are concerned, only a matter of grace. In order that it should 

 have any weight, we must grant the fact, at once of the exist- 

 ence of a matter of life, and of all organs and organisms being 

 but aggregates of it. This, obviously, we cannot now do. By 

 way of hypothesis, however, we may assume it. Let it be 

 granted, then, that pro hac vice there is a physical basis of life 

 with all the consequences named ; and now let us see how Mr 

 Huxley proceeds to establish its materiality. 



The whole former part of Mr Huxley's essay consists (as said) 

 of fifty paragraphs, and the argument immediately concerned is 

 confined to the latter ten of them. This argument (see also 

 p. 22) is the simple chemical analogy that, under stimulus of an 

 electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen uniting into an equivalent 

 weight of water, and, under stimulus of pre-existing protoplasm, 

 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an equiva- 

 lent weight of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for attri- 

 buting the properties of the consequent to the properties of the 

 antecedents in the latter case as in the former. The properties 

 of protoplasm are, in origin and character, precisely on the same 

 level as the properties of water. The cases are perfectly parallel. 

 It is as absurd to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, 

 as a new entity aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere 

 chemical and physical structure that water exhibits certain pro- 

 perties called aqueous, it is also by its mere chemical and 

 physical structure that protoplasm exhibits certain properties 

 called vital. All that is necessary in either case is, "under 

 certain conditions," to bring the chemical constituents to- 

 gether. If water is a molecular complication, protoplasm is 

 equally a molecular complication, and for the description of the 

 one or the other there is no change of language required. A 

 new substance with new qualities results in precisely the same 

 way here, as a new substance with new qualities there ; and the 

 derivative qualities are not more different from the primitive 

 qualities in the one instance, than the derivative qualities are 

 different from the primitive qualities in the other. Lastly, the 

 modus operandi of pre-existent protoplasm is not more unintel- 

 ligible than that of the electric spark. The conclusion is irre- 

 sistible, then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible, 

 and consequently identical, the properties it displays, vitality 

 and intellect included, are as much the result of molecular con- 

 stitution as those of water itself. 



