40 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



organic, or inorganic ! That alternative is simply slipped in and 

 passed ; but it is in that alternative that the whole matter lies. 

 Chemically, dead protoplasm is to Mr Huxley quite as good as 

 living protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is quite con- 

 tent with dead protoplasm, and even swallows it, he says, in 

 the shape of bread, lobster, mutton, etc., with all the satisfactory 

 results to be desired. We shall not grudge Mr Huxley his 

 br'ead, his lobster, or his mutton. Still, as concerns the argu- 

 ment, it must be pointed out that it is only these that (as inor- 

 ganic) can be placed on the same level as water; and that living 

 protoplasm is not only unlike water, but it is unlike dead pro- 

 toplasm. Living protoplasm, namely, is identical with dead 

 protoplasm only so far as its chemistry is concerned (if even so 

 far as that); and it is quite evident, consequently, that differ- 

 ence between the two cannot depend on that in which they are 

 identical cannot depend on the chemistry. Life, then, is no 

 affair of chemical and physical structure, and must find its ex- 

 planation in something else. It is thus that, lifted high enough, 

 the light of the analogy between water and protoplasm is seen 

 to go out. Water, in fact, when formed from hydrogen and 

 oxygen, is, in a certain way, and in relation to them, no new 

 product; it has still, like them, only chemical and physical 

 qualities ; it is still, as they are, inorganic. So far as kind of 

 power is concerned, they are still on the same level. But not 

 so protoplasm, where, with preservation of the chemical and 

 physical likeness, there is the addition of the unlikeness of life, 

 of organisation, and of ideas. But the addition is a new world 

 a new and higher world, the world of a self-realising thought, 

 the world of an entelechy. The change of language objected to by 

 Mr Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is not mere mole- 

 cular complication that we have any longer before us, and the 

 qualities of the derivative are essentially and absolutely different 

 from the qualities of the primitive. If we did invent the term 

 aquosity, then, as an abstract sign for all the qualities of water, 

 we should really do very little harm ; but aquosity and vitality 

 would still remain essentially unlike. While for the invention 

 of aquosity there is little or no call, however, the fact in the 

 other case is that we are not only compelled to invent, but 

 to perceive vitality. We are quite willing to do as Mr Huxley 

 would have us to do : look on, watch the phenomena, and name 

 the results. But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these 

 respects is the necessity for the recognition of a new world and 

 a new nomenclature. It is possible, certainly, to object that 

 there are different states of water, as ico and steam. But the 

 relation of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapour, 

 surely offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm dead to 

 protoplasm alive. That relation is not an analogy but an 



