54 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value to Mr 

 Darwin's book ; nor even his ready ingenuity, whatever interest 

 it may lend: it is the material information it contains. The 

 ingenuity, namely, verges somewhat on that Humian expedient 

 of natural conjecture so copiously exemplified, on occasion of a 

 few trite texts, in Mr Buckle. But that natural conjecture is 

 always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may be said 

 that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory always to the 

 personally ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the im- 

 provement of the race ; or that, the weakest being always 

 necessarily left at home, the improvement was balanced by 

 deterioration; or that the ablest were necessarily the most 

 exposed to danger, and so, etc., etc., according to ingenuity, 

 usque ad infinitum. Trustworthy conclusion is not possible to 

 this method, but only to the induction of facts, or to scientific 

 demonstration. 



Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able to level 

 out the difference between organic and inorganic, or between 

 genera and genera, or species and species. The differences 

 persist despite of both ; the distributed identity remains 

 unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, is Mr Darwin's theory 

 competent to explain the objective idea by any reference to 

 time and conditions. Living beings do exist in a mighty chain 

 from the moss to the man ; but that chain, far from founding, 

 is founded in the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural 

 growth of this into that. That chain is itself the most brilliant 

 stamp, the sign-manual, of design. On every ledge of nature, 

 from the lowest to the highest, there is a life that is its, a 

 creature to represent it, reflect it so to speak, pasture on it. 

 The last, highest, brightest link of this chain is man ; the incar- 

 nation of thought itself, which is the summation of this 

 universe ; man, that includes in himself all other links and 

 their single secret the personified universe, the subject of the 

 world. Mr Huxley makes but small reference to thought ; he 

 only tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of course. 



It may be objected, indeed, to reach the last stage in this 

 discussion that, if Mr Huxley has not disproved the concep- 

 tion of thought and life " as a something which works through 

 matter, but is independent of it," neither have we proved it. 

 But it is easy for us to reply that, if " independent of," means 

 here "unconnected with" we have had no such object. We have 

 had no object whatever, in fact, but to resist, now the extravagant 

 assertion that all organised tissue, from the lichen to Leibnitz, 

 is alike in faculty, and again the equally extravagant assertion 

 that life and thought are but ordinary products of molecular 

 chemistry . As regards the latter assertion, we have endeavoured 

 to show that the processes of vital organisation (as self-produc- 



