ADDRESS. 29 



In a lecture 12 to which I once had the pleasure of listening — a lecture 

 characterised no less by lncid exposition than by the fascinating form in 

 which its facts were presented to the hearers, Professor Huxley argues 

 that no difference, however great, between the phenomena of living 

 matter and those of the lifeless elements of which this matter is composed 

 should militate against our attributing to protoplasm the phenomena of 

 life as properties essentially inherent in it ; since we know that the result 

 of a chemical combination of physical elements may exhibit physical 

 properties totally different from those of the elements combined ; the 

 physical phenomena presented by water, for example, having no resem- 

 blance to those of its combining elements oxygen and hydrogen. 



I believe that Professor Huxley intended to apply this argument only 

 to the phenomena of life in the stricter sense of the word. As such it is 

 conclusive. But if it be pushed further, and extended to the phenomena 

 of consciousness, it loses all its force. The analogy, perfectly valid in the 

 former case, here fails. The properties of the chemical compound are 

 like those of its components, still physical properties. They come within 

 the wide category of the universally accepted properties of matter, while 

 those of consciousness belong to a category absolutely distinct — one 

 which presents not a trace of a connection with any of those which 

 physicists have agreed in assigning to matter as its proper characteristics. 

 The argument thus breaks down, for its force depends on analogy alone, 

 and here all analogy vanishes. 



That consciousness is never manifested except in the presence of 

 cerebral matter or of something like it, there cannot be a question ; but 

 this is a very different thing from its being a property of such matter in 

 the sense in which polarity is a property of the magnet, or irritability of 

 protoplasm. The generation of the rays which lie invisible beyond the 

 violet in the spectrum of the sun cannot be regarded as a property of the 

 medium which by changing their refrangibility can alone render them 

 apparent. 



I know that there is a special charm in those broad generalisations 

 which would refer many very different phenomena to a common source. 

 But in this very charm there is undoubtedly a danger, and we must be all 

 the more careful lest it should exert an influence in arresting the progress 

 of truth, just as at an earlier period traditional beliefs exerted an authority 

 from which the mind but slowly and with difficulty succeeded in emanci- 

 pating itself. 



But have we, it may be asked, made in all this one step forward 

 towards an explanation of the phenomena of consciousness or the discovery 

 of its source ? Assuredly not. The power of conceiving of a substance 

 different from that of matter is still beyond the limits of human intelli- 

 gence, and the physical or objective conditions which are the concomi- 

 tants of thought are the only ones of which it is possible to know 

 anything, and the only ones whose study is of value. 



' 2 ' The Physical Basis of Life.' See Essays and Reviews, by T. H. Huxley. 



