48 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing about the compo- 

 sition of any body whatever as it is ? We know perfectly well 

 that black is white, for we are absolutely ignorant of either as 

 it is ! The form of the calc-spar, which we can analyse, we 

 cannot restore ; therefore the form of the protoplasm, which we 

 cannot analyse, has nothing to do with the matter in hand ; and 

 the chemistry of what is dead may be accepted as the chemistry 

 of what is living ! In the case of reasoning so irrelevant it is 

 hardly worth while referring to what concerns the forms them- 

 selves ; that they are totally incommensurable, that in all forms 

 of calc-spar there is no question but of what is physical, while 

 in protoplasm the change of form is introduction into an entire 

 new world. As in these illustrations, so in the case immedi- 

 ately before us. No appeal to ignorance in regard to something 

 else, the electric spark, should be allowed to transform another 

 ignorance, that of the action of pre-existing protoplasm, into 

 knowledge, here into the knowledge that the two unknown 

 things, because of non-knowledge, are perfectly analogous ! 

 That this analogy does not exist that the electric spark and 

 pre-existing protoplasm are, in their relative places, not on the 

 same chemical level this is the main point for us to see ; and 

 Mr Huxley's allusion to our ignorance must not be allowed to 

 blind us to it. Here we have in a glass vessel so much hydrogen 

 and oxygen, into which we discharge an electric spark, and 

 water is the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive 

 between this production of water by external experiment and 

 the production of protoplasm by protoplasm *? The discrepancy 

 is so palpable that it were impertinent to enlarge on it.* The 

 truth is just this, that the measured and mixed gases, the vessel, 

 and the spark, in the one case, are as unlike the fortuitous food, 

 the living organs, and the long process of assimilation in the 

 other case, as the product water is unlike the product proto- 

 plasm. No ; that the action of the electric spark should be 

 unknown, is no reason why we should not insist on protoplasm 

 for protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm can only be pro- 

 duced by protoplasm, and each of all the innumerable varieties 

 of protoplasm, only by its own kind. For the protoplasm of the 

 worm we must go to the worm, and for that of the toad-stool to 

 the toad-stool. In fact, if all living beings come from protoplasm, 

 it is quite as certain that, but for living beings, protoplasm 

 would disappear. Without an egg you cannot have a hen 

 that is true ; but it is equally true that, without a hen, you cannot 



* [ point out below, however, as one instance of this discrepancy, that were the 

 cases really analogous, the spark ought to produce not water, but itself. The Rev. Mr 

 Martin, in an article in the " British and Foreign Evangelical Review " for Jan. 1370, 

 adds (I do not quote his exact words) "or the water ought to have been produced, 

 not by a spark, but by water." I beg to thank Mr Martin for the suggestion, as well 

 as for the great kindness that inspires his eloquent article, 



