56 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



mere modifications, must be pronounced totally different. Such 

 eventuation must be held competent to what can only be named 

 generic or specific difference. The " child " is only "father of 

 the man " it is not the man ; who, moreover, in the course of 

 an ordinary life, we are told, has totally changed himself, not 

 once, but many times, retaining at the last not one single 

 particle of matter with which he set out. Such eventuations, 

 whether called modifications or not, certainly involve essential 

 difference. And so situated are the " ducts, fibres, pollen, and 

 ovules" of the nettle, which, whether compared with the 

 protoplasm of the nettle-sting, or with that in which they 

 originated, must be held to have assumed, by their own actions, 

 indisputable differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form, 

 substance, and faculty. 



Much, in fact, depends on definition here ; and, in reference to 

 modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary when identity 

 shall be admitted to cease and difference to begin. There are 

 the old Greek puzzles of the Bald Head and the Heap, for 

 example. How many grains, or how many hairs, may we 

 remove before a heap of wheat is no heap, or a head of hair 

 bald? These concern quantity alone; but, in other case?. 

 bone, muscle, brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a 

 quantitative, but a qualitative difference; and in regard to 

 such differences, the word modification can be regarded ?,s 

 but a cloak, under which identity is to be shuffled into differ- 

 ence, but remain identity all the same. The brick is but 

 modified clay, Mr Huxley intimates, bake it and paint it as 

 you may ; but is the difference introduced by the baking and 

 painting to be ignored ? Is what Mr Huxley calls the " artifice " 

 not to be taken into account, leave alone the " potter " 1 The 

 strong firm rope is about as exact an example of modification 

 proper modification of the weak loose hemp as can well be 

 found ; but are we to exclude from our consideration the whole 

 element of difference due to the hand and brain of man ? Not 

 far from Burns's Monument, on the Calton Hill of Edinburgh, 

 there lies a mass of stones which is potentially a church, the 

 former Trinity College Church. Were this church again realised, 

 would it be fair to call it a mere modification of the previous 

 stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered fowl. 

 Chaucer describes to us the cock, " hight chaunteclere," that 

 was to his " faire Pertelotte " so dear : 



** His comb was redder than the fine corall, 

 Embattled, as it were a castle-wall ; 

 His bill was black, and as the jet it shone ; 

 Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes) ; 

 His nailes whiter than the lilie flour, 

 And like the burned gold was his colour." 



Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow comb. 



