AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 45 



signalises in protoplasm can account for thought : not alimenta- 

 tion, and not reproduction, certainly ; but not even contractility. 

 We have seen already that there is no proof of contraction 

 being necessary even for the simplest sensation ; but much less 

 is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for the inner and 

 independent operations of the mind. Mr Huxley himself admits 

 this. He says : " Speech, gesture, and every other form of 

 human action are, in the long-run, resolvable into muscular 

 contraction ;" and so, " even those manifestations of intellect, 

 of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher 

 faculties, are not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as 

 to every one but the subject of them, they are known only as 

 transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the 

 body." The concession is made here, we see, that these 

 manifestations are differently known to the subject of them. 

 But we may first object that, if even that privileged " every 

 one but the subject" were limited to a knowledge of contrac- 

 tions, he would not know much. It is only because he knows, 

 first of all, a thinker and wilier of contractions that these 

 themselves cease to be but passing externalities, and transitory 

 contingencies. Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of 

 nature for contractions, and for that which they only represent. 

 It would hardly be fair to confound either the receiver or the 

 sender of a telegraphic message, with the movements which 

 alone bore it, and without which it would have been impossible. 

 The sign is not the thing signified, it is but the servant of the 

 signifier his own arbitrary mark and intelligible, in the first 

 place, only to him. It is the meaning, in all cases, that is alone 

 vital ; the sign is but an accident. To convert the internality 

 into the arbitrary externality that simply expresses it, is for Mr 

 Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are made known to your 

 neighbour by contractions, therefore your ideas are of the same 

 nature as contractions ! Or, even to take it from the other side, 

 your neighbour perceives in you contractions only, and therefore 

 your ideas are contractions ! Are not the vital elements here 

 present the two correspondent internalities, between which the 

 contractions constitute but an arbitrary chain of external com- 

 munication, that is so now, but may be otherwise again ? The 

 ringing of the bell at the window is not precisely the dwarf 

 within. Nor are Engineer Chappe's " wooden arms and elbow- 

 joints jerking and fugling in the air," to be identified with 

 Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties, even for 

 speech, etc., assuredly Mr Huxley might have well spared himself 

 this superfluous and inapplicable reference to contraction. 



But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr Huxley concedes 

 that these manifestations are differently known to the subject 

 of them. If so, what becomes of his assertion of but a certain 



