Property and Common Sense 131 
by Mr. Spencer, but it points to the same conclusion, 
namely, that though luck will avail much if backed by 
cunning and experience, it is unavailing for any permanent 
result without them. There is an irony which seems almost 
always to attend on those who maintain that protoplasm 
is the only living substance which ere long points their 
conclusions the opposite way to that which they desire— 
in the very last direction, indeed, in which they of all 
people in the world would willingly see them pointed. 
It may be asked why I should have so strong an objection 
to seeing protoplasm as the only living substance, when I 
find this view so useful to me as tending to substantiate 
design—which I admit that I have as much and as seriously 
at heart as I can allow myself to have any matter which, 
after all, can so little affect daily conduct ; I reply that it 
is no part of my business to inquire whether this or that 
makes for my pet theories or against them ; my concern is 
to inquire whether or no it is borne out by facts, and I 
find the opinion that protoplasm is the one living substance 
unstable, inasmuch as it is an attempt to make a halt where 
no halt can be made. This is enough; but, furthermore, 
the fact that the protoplasmic parts of the body are more 
living than the non-protoplasmic—which I cannot deny, 
without denying that it is any longer convenient to think 
of life and death at all—will answer my purpose to the 
full as well or better. 
I pointed out another consequence, which, again, was 
cruelly the reverse of what the promoters of the protoplasm 
movement might be supposed anxious to arrive at—in a 
series of articles which appeared in the Examiner during 
the summer of 1879, and showed that if protoplasm were 
held to be the sole seat of life, then this unity in the sub- 
stance vivifying all, both animals and plants, must be held 
as uniting them into a single corporation or body—especi- 
ally when their community of descent is borne in mind— 
more effectually than any merely superficial separation into 
