Q 
Price.] 370 [March 1, 
mind of man and also rules it, except as He has conferred upon it free- 
will, within permitted limits. 
The author of the essay on the Physical Basis of Life, carries his induc- 
tion beyond animate life. He makes matter cause of life, and he places 
vegetable life on the same basis with the animal, and makes the like 
protoplasm the source of both. Both, indeed, have their circulations in 
which are contained material elements for growth, but elements of a quite 
different nature and derivation. The animal lives on organic matter ; 
dead matter that has had life in it; the vegetable derives its supply fresh 
from inorganic matter in the earth or air. This leaves us justly to infer 
that the elements of growth are of different kinds ; and if so, that there 
then can be no protoplasmic kindred, and nothing is gained by the theory. 
The fluid in the thistle and other plants have a contractility that gives 
movement to the circulation and diffuses the molecules or protoplasm. 
That shows a different impelling force from that of the heart of the 
animal ; and rather indicates a want of identity of protoplasmic material, 
while the wants of the two growths demand different material. The 
animal’s circulation constantly repeats its rounds, while the plant’s growth 
depends upon a single fluid transmission from root to leaf, and from leaf 
to root, as the seasons change. Huxley would confound the two great 
kingdoms of nature, because there is a very limited agreement in the 
appearances and behavior of the tluid supply of both. Contrasting plants 
with the lowest animals, he says, ‘‘it may well be asked, how is one mass 
of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished from another? Why 
call one ‘plant,’ and the other ‘animal’?”? The answer naturally would 
be because they are of different natures, showing that their protoplasm 
should be different in elements, and because the animal has sensation, the 
plant none ; and usually other obvious distinctions. .'To call the supply 
of vitalized food by the same name, without proof that its elements are 
the same, seems to be a summary way of breaking down distinctions 
between the difterent kingdoms of beings and things of life. 
Continuing our attention to vegetable life, let us judge the tree by the 
fruit. Can anybody imagine the resin of the evergreen to be identical 
with the sap of deciduous trees? The inflammable turpentine to be the same 
as the watery sap that would extinguish fire ? Can the oak and hemlock, 
whose bark contains tannin, have the same base as the sap of the sugar 
maple and sugar cane? Can the tea and coffee trees, producing theine, 
come from the same elements as the palm and olive trees? The gums of 
commerce, the varnishes, the resins; the spices, cloves, nutmegs; the 
vegetable coloring matters ; tobacco, opium, hashhish ; and cinchonia and 
all vegetable drugs; it is impossible to believe that all these, and plants 
that produce deadly poisons, had the same base with our farinaceous food, 
and edible fruits. Theory that attempts to destroy these distinctions by 
a few observations so narrowly based as that in question, must meet with 
deserved incredulity, by mankind. The canon of legitimate induction is 
violated. A similtude of molecules presented to the vision by the micro- 
