50 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



not less than those of the lowest animals, are but the molecular 

 manifestations of their common protoplasm. 



Is this alleged reciprocal convertibility true, then 1 Is it true 

 that every organism can digest every other organism, and that 

 thus a relation of identity is established between that which 

 digests and whatever is digested 1 These questions place Mr 

 Huxley's general enterprise, perhaps, in the most glaring light 

 yet ; for it is very evident that there is an end of the argument 

 if all foods and all feeders are essentially identical both with 

 themselves and with each other. The facts of the case, however, 

 I believe to be too well known to require a single word here on 

 my part. It is not long since Mr Huxley himself pointed out 

 the great difference between the foods of plants and the foods 

 of animals ; and the reader may be safely left to think for 

 himself of ruminantia and carnivora, of soft bills and hard bills, 

 of molluscs and men. Mr Huxley talks feelingly of the possi- 

 bility of himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the 

 lobster feeding him ; but such pathos is not always applicable : 

 it is not likely that a sponge would be to the stomach of 

 Mr Huxley any more than Mr Huxley to the stomach of a 

 sponge. 



But a more important point is this, that the functions them- 

 selves remain quite apart from the alleged convertibility. We 

 can neither acquire the functions of what we eat, nor impart 

 our functions to what eats us. We shall not come to fly by 

 feeding on vultures, nor they to speak by feeding on us. No 

 possible manure of human brains will enable a corn-field to 

 reason. But if functions are inconvertible, the convertibility of 

 the protoplasm is idle. In this inconvertibility, indeed, functions 

 will be seen to be independent of mere chemical composition. 

 And that is the truth : for function there is more required than 

 either chemistry or physics. 



It is to be acknowledged to notice a collateral but indis- 

 pensable consideration, for the sake of completeness, and by 

 way of transition to the final question of possible objections 

 that Mr Huxley would be very much assisted in his identifica- 

 tion of differences, were but the theories of the molecularists, 

 on the one hand, and of Mr Darwin, on the other, once for all 

 established. The three modes of theorising indicated, indeed, 

 are not without a tendency to approach one another ; and it is 

 precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph for 

 the doctrine of materialism. Mr Huxley, as we have seen 

 though what he desiderates is an autoplastic living matter that, 

 produced by ordinary chemical processes, is yet capable of con- 

 tinuing and developing itself into new and higher forms still 

 begins with the egg. Now the theory of the molecularists 

 would, for its part, remove all the difficulties that, for material- 



