AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 49 



have an egg. So in protoplasm ; which, consequently, in the 

 production of itself, offers no analogy to the production, or 

 precipitation by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water. 

 Besides, if, for protoplasm, pre-existing protoplasm is always 

 necessary, how was there ever a first protoplasm ? 



Generally, then, the analogy does not hold, whether in the 

 one reference or the other, and Mr Huxley has no warrant for 

 the reduction of protoplasm to the mere chemical level which 

 he assigns it in either. That level is brought very prominently 

 forward in such expressions as these : That it is only necessary 

 to bring the chemical elements " together," " under certain con- 

 ditions," to give rise to the more complex body, protoplasm, 

 just as there is a similar expedient to give rise to water ; and 

 that, under the influence of pre-existing living protoplasm, 

 carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent 

 weight of protoplasm makes its appearance, just as. under the 

 influence of the electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear, 

 and an equivalent weight of water makes its appearance. All 

 this, plainly, is to assume for protoplasm such mere chemical 

 place and nature as consist not with the facts. The cases are, 

 in truth, not parallel, and the " certain conditions " are wholly 

 diverse. All that is said we can do at will for water, but nothing 

 of what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To say we 

 can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will produce 

 protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances, only to say, and 

 is not to say that, in this way, we make a chemical experiment. 

 To insist on a chemical analogy, in. fact, between water and 

 protoplasm, is to omit the differences not covered by the analogy 

 at all- thought, design, life, and all the processes of organisa- 

 tion ; and it is but simple procedure to omit these differences 

 only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere. 



It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again to the 

 difference here, however, once more incidentally suggested 

 between protoplasm and protoplasm. Mr Huxley, that is, 

 almost in his very last word on this part of the argument (see 

 page 38), seems to become aware of the bearing of this on what 

 relates to materiality, and he would again stamp protoplasm 

 (and with it life and intellect), into an indifferent identity. In 

 order that there should be no break between the lowest functions 

 and the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions 

 of man), he has " endeavoured to prove," he says, that the 

 rotoplasm of the lowest organisms is " essentially identical 

 with, and most readily converted into that of any animal." On 

 this alleged reciprocal convertibility of protoplasm, then, Mr 

 Huxley would again found as well an inference of identity, as 

 the further conclusion that the functions of the highest, 



D 



