44 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



office. Membranes, rods, and liquids it required the express 

 experiment of man to make good the fact that the structure of 

 the ear exhibited really the most perfect apparatus possible for 

 the purpose. And are we to conceive such machinery, such 

 apparatus, such contrivances merely molecular ? Are molecules 

 adequate to such things molecules in their blind passivity, and 

 dead, dull insensibility ? Is it to molecular agency Mr Huxley 

 himself owes that "singular inward laboratory" of which he 

 speaks, and without which all the protoplasm in the world 

 would be useless to him ? Surely, in the presence of these 

 manifest ideas, it is impossible to attribute the single peculiar 

 feature of protoplasm its vitality, namely to mere molecular 

 chemistry. Protoplasm, it is true, breaks up into carbon, 

 hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen 

 and oxygen ; but the watch breaks similarly up into mere brass, 

 and steel, and glass. The loose materials of the watch even 

 its chemical materials if you will replace its weight, quite as 

 accurately as the constituents, carbon, etc., replace the weight 

 of the protoplasm. But neither these nor those replace the 

 vanished idea, which was alone the important element. Mr 

 Huxley saw no break in the series of steps in molecular com- 

 plication ; but, though not molecular, it is difficult to understand 

 what more striking, what more absolute break could be desired 

 than the break into an idea. It is of that break alone that we 

 think in the watch ; and it is of that break alone that we should 

 think in the protoplasm which, far more cunningly, far more 

 rationally, constructs a heart, an eye, or an ear. That is the 

 break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall never 

 explain it by molecules. 



But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to account 

 either for vital organisation or the objective idea of design, 

 much more are they inadequate, in the third place, to account 

 for the subjective idea, for the phenomena of thought as 

 thought. Yet Mr Huxley tells us that thought is but the 

 expression of the molecular changes of protoplasm. This he 

 only tells us ; this he does not prove. He merely says that, if 

 we admit the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but 

 " direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are 

 composed," we must admit as much for the functions of the 

 highest. We have not admitted Mr Huxley's presupposition ; 

 but, even with its admission, we should not feel bound to admit 

 his conclusion. In such a mighty system of differences, there 

 are ample room and verge enough for the introduction of new 

 motives. We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought, let 

 its connection be what it may with, has never been proved to 

 result from, organisation, no improvement of the proof required 

 will be found in protoplasm. No one power that Mr Huxley 



