312 THE HUMAN BODY. 



these are transmitted from parent to offspring. Every new 

 Human Being starts as a portion of protoplasm separated 

 from a parent and affording the conditions for those chemi- 

 cal combinations which supply to living matter its working 

 power: this serves, like the energy of the burning part of a 

 fire to start similar 'processes in other portions of matter. At 

 present we know nothing in physiology answering to the 

 match which lights a furnace: those manifestations of energy 

 which we call life are handed down from generation to gen- 

 eration, as the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta from one 

 watcher to another. Science may at some time teach us how 

 to bring the chemical constituents of protoplasm into that 

 combination in which they possess the faculty of starting 

 oxidations under those conditions which characterize life; 

 then we shall have learnt to strike the vital match. For 

 the present we must be content to study the properties of 

 that form of matter which possesses living faculties; since 

 there is no satisfactory proof that it has ever been produced, 

 within our experience, apart from the influence of matter 

 already living. How the vital spark first originated, how 

 molecules of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen first 

 united with water and salts to form protoplasm, we have no 

 scientific data to ground a positive opinion upon, and such as 

 we may have must rest upon other grounds. 



