PROPERTY AND COMMON SENSE. 147 



• earth itself shall pass away. This came practically to 

 saying that protoplasm was God Almighty, who, of all 

 the forms open to Him, had chosen this singularly 

 unattractive one as the channel through which to 

 make Himself manifest in the flesh by taking our 

 nature upon Him, and animating us with His own 

 Spirit. Our biologists, in fact, were fast nearing the 

 conception of a God who was both personal and 

 material, but who could not be made to square with 

 pantheistic notions inasmuch as no provision was 

 made for the inorganic world ; and, indeed, they seem 

 to have become alarmed at the grotesqueness of the 

 position in which they must ere long have found 

 themselves, for in the autumn of 1879 the boom 

 collapsed, and thenceforth the leading reviews and 

 magazines have known protoplasm no more. About 

 the same time bathybius, which at one time bade fair 

 to supplant it upon the throne of popularity, died 

 suddenly, as I am told, at Norwich, under circum- 

 stances which did not transpire, nor has its name, so 

 far as I am aware, been ever again mentioned. 



So much for the conclusions in regard to the larger 

 aspect of life taken as a whole which must follow 

 from confining life to protoplasm ; but there is another 

 aspect — that, namely, which regards the individual. 

 The inevitable consequences of confining life to the 

 protoplasmic parts of the body were just as unex- 

 pected and unwelcome here as they had been with 

 regard to life at large ; for, as I have already pointed 

 out, there is no drawing the Line at protoplasm and 

 resting at this point j nor yet at the next halting- 



