52 



that each type operates upon matter — the very same matter, 

 too — with such irresistible guiding potency as to build it up 

 into forms exactly corresponding to the parent stock. Science 

 cannot, in this respect, control it ; it may extinguish it ; it may 

 dwarf it ; but it cannot confer upon it the power or capability 

 of building up an organism different from that of its parent. 

 Matter — all life's visible environment — can do nothing but 

 supply the raw material of construction. Life guides the 

 moulding and building in entire independence, alike of man 

 and of matter; and all scientific investigation proves that life 

 — pre-existing life— is essential to the production of living- 

 organisms. 



But scientists have tried to go deeper, and we must follow 

 them. The material basis of life, or FrotopJasin as it is 

 called, has been subjected to most minute examination by the 

 microscope, and to the most searching analysis of the chemist. 

 Its constituent elements have been discovered and described, 

 and the results are interesting and instructive. Huxley says, 

 '' that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been 

 examined contain the four elements — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 

 and nitrogen — in very complex union.'' * In whatever form 

 it appears, " whether fungus or oak, worm or man," its 

 elements are the same ; and when life in it becomes extinct, 

 it '' is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents." f It 

 is admitted, of course, that carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 

 nitrogen are lifeless bodies, and that they all exist previous to 

 their union ; '' but when they are brought together," says 

 Huxley, " under certain conditions, they give rise to the still 

 more complex body, protoplasm; and this protoplasm exhibits 

 the phenomena of life." f 



Would it not, at first sight, seem from these words that 

 Science had at length succeeded in solving the mystery of the 

 origin of life ? It knows all the elements of protoplasm ; and 

 there is no lack of them in nature. They exist everywhere 

 around us. " With my own hands," writes Professor Pritcbard, 

 ''a quarter of a century ago, I obtained all the elements which 

 I found in an egg and in grains of wheat, out of a piece of 

 granite and from the air which surrounded it — element for 

 element. It has been one of the most astonishing and unex- 

 pected results of modern Science that we can unmistakably 

 trace these very elements also in the stars." § So, then, the 

 elements are known, and are at hand; Science can easily put 



* Lay Sermons, p. 130. t Ibid., p. 131. T Ihid., p. 135. 



§ Paper read at Brighton, 1874. 



