a 
1872.] 307 [Price. 
We are to go deeper than a certain likeness in protoplasms, to under- 
stand so much of life as we are permitted to know. Dr. Huxley in his 
article entitled, ‘‘ Yeast,’’ disclaims having said anything new in his lecture 
upon ‘The Physical Basis of Life.’ He is, however, responsible for 
what he adopts, and for the breadth and length of his deductions. Pro- 
toplasm he considers the basis of life, and that it is a physical basis ; and 
he assigns no other than this as cause of life, and makes the life but a 
property of the protoplasm. He says: ‘(If the properties of water may 
be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its compo- 
nent molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that 
the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its 
molecules.’”? Nature is deemed exuberant of one aliment, called proto- 
plasm, that supports all the life of the world, whether received by the 
roots into the circulation of the trees, or by the stomach into the cireu- 
lations of animals; ‘‘a unity of power or faculty; a unit of form, and 
a unit of substantial composition ; does pervade the whole living world.” 
He continues, ‘‘ All the multifarious and complicated activities of man 
are comprehensible under three categories : either they are immediately 
directed towards the maintenance and development of the body, or they 
effect transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body, or 
they tend towards the continuance of the species. Even these manifes- 
tations of intellect, of feeling and of will, which we rightly name the 
higher faculties, are not excluded from the classification.” “ This pro- 
toplasm exhibits the phenomena of life.’”” These extracts, and the drift 
of the lecture show that the author is not merely showing what is the 
physical basis of life, but is attempting to show that life is but a property 
of matter which accounts for all bodily and mental activities. He makes 
life a property of protoplasm ; and protoplasm a thing composed of car- 
bon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen; as water is a thing composed of 
hydrogen and oxygen ; and that as ‘ aquosity ’’ cannot be said to exist to 
produce the water from said two gases, so is ‘‘vitality’’ not to continue 
to be spoken of as something existing in the living matter, which had no 
representative in the non-living matter which gave rise to it. But the 
water is a chemical compound, and protoplasm consists of parts not 
chemically united ; but united by that thing called life that resists chemi- 
cal action ; that has properties of a nature other than chemical, and is in 
all nature peculiar and discriminated. We see that he would thus sink 
the life into protoplasm, and make it and the intellect but a property of 
matter. But others should make better observation and induction. 
It may well be asserted from all that we can observe and know, that 
matter cannot originate life; nor life matter. Each logically demands a 
Creator. Life cannot originate itself; but only continue the previously 
created life, by a power conferred on life to continue life. Dead matter 
may be vitalized and thus become part of the living body; but the life. 
must first be, to appropriate matter for its uses, to vitalize it, and to build 
up the living body and to continue it in life. In all time, only life has 
