AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 47 



contained, and absolutely sui generis, as the world of matter on 

 the other side. It will be sufficient here to allude to as much 

 as this, with special reference to the fact that, so far as this 

 argument is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any the 

 very slightest difference. All the ancient reasons for the inde- 

 pendence of thought as against organisation, can be used with 

 even more striking effect as against protoplasm ; but it will be 

 sufficient to indicate this, so much are the arguments in question 

 a common property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its 

 own warrant ; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns, 

 " its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God." And that 

 is the strongest argument on this whole aspect. Through- 

 out the entire universe, organic and inorganic, thought is the 

 controlling sovereign ; nor does matter anywhere refuse its 

 allegiance. So it is in thought, too, that man has his patent of 

 nobility, believes that he is created in the image of God, and 

 knows himself a freeman of infinitude. 



But the analogy, in the hands of Mr Huxley, has, we have 

 seen, a second reference that, namely, to the excitants, if we 

 may call them so, which determine combination. The modus 

 operandi^ Mr Huxley tells us, of pre-existing protoplasm in 

 determining the formation of new protoplasm, is not more 

 unintelligible than the modus operandi of the electric spark in 

 determining the formation of water ; and so both, we are left 

 to infer, are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is 

 rather a favourite with Mr Huxley. " But objectors of this 

 class," he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion to those who 

 hesitate to conclude from dead to living matter, " do not seem 

 to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing 

 about the composition of any body whatever as it is." In the 

 same neighbourhood, too, he argues that, though impotent to 

 restore to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not 

 hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, and 

 should not, consequently, any more hesitate because of any 

 mere difference of form to accept the analysis of dead for that 

 of living protoplasm. It is certainly fair to point out that, if 

 we bear ignorance and impotence with equanimity in one case, 

 we may equally so bear them in another ; but it is not fair to 

 convert ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power. 

 Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let them pass. 

 It is not considered that, if we know nothing about the com- 

 position of any body whatever as it is, then we do know 

 nothing, and that it is strangely idle to offer absolute ignorance 

 as a support for the most dogmatic knowledge. If such state- 

 ments are, as is really expected for them, to be accepted, yet 

 not accepted, they are the stultification of all logic. Is the 

 chemistry of living to be seen to be the same as the chemistry 



