148 LUCK, OR CUNNING f 



point beyond; nor at the one beyond that. How 

 often is this process to be repeated ? and in what can 

 it end but in the rehabilitation of the soul as an 

 ethereal, spiritual, vital principle, apart from matter, 

 which, nevertheless, it animates, vivifying the clay of 

 our bodies ? No one who has followed the course 

 either of biology or psychology during this century, 

 and more especially during the last five and twenty 

 years, will tolerate the reintroduction of the soul as 

 something apart from the substratum in which both 

 feeling and action must be held to inhere. The notion 

 of matter being ever changed except by other matter 

 in another state is so shocking to the intellectual 

 conscience that it may be dismissed without discussion ; 

 yet if bathybius had not been promptly dealt with, it 

 must have become apparent even to the British public 

 that there were indeed but few steps from protoplasm, 

 as the only living substance, to vital principle. Our 

 biologists therefore stifled bathybius, perhaps with 

 justice, certainly with prudence, and left protoplasm 

 to its fate. 



Any one who reads Professor Allman's address 

 above referred to with due care will see that he was 

 uneasy about protoplasm, even at the time of its 

 greatest popularity. Professor AUman never says out- 

 right that the non-protoplasmic parts of the body are 

 no more alive than chairs and tables are. He said 

 what involved this as an inevitable consequence, and 

 there can be no doubt that this is what he wanted to 

 convey, but he never insisted on it with the out- 

 spokenness and emphasis with which so startling a 



