WHAT IS DARWINISM t 73 



Essay on the Origin of Species, printed in the 

 " Westminster Review," in 1860, and re- 

 garded it as an argument in favor of Materialism. This we 

 think was a very natural, if not an unavoidable mistake, on the 

 part of the public. For in that Essay, he says that Protoplasm, 

 or the physical basis of life, " is a kind of matter common to all 

 living beings, that the powers or faculties of all kinds of living 

 matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially of the 

 same kind." Protoplasm as far as examined contains the four 

 elements, — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These are 

 lifeless bodies, " but when brought together under certain con- 

 ditions, they give rise to the still more complex body Protoplasm ; 

 and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life." There is 

 no more reason, he teaches, for assuming the existence of a mys- 

 terious something called vitality to account for vital phenomena, 

 than there is for the assumption of something called Aquasity to 

 account for the phenomena of water. Life is said to be " the 

 product of a certain disposition of material molecules." The 

 matter of life is ' ' composed of ordinary matter, differing from it 

 only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated. I take it," 

 he says, " to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove 

 that anything whatever may not be the effect of » material and 

 necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompetent to 

 prove that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous 

 act is one, which, by the assumption, has no cause ; and the at- 

 tempt to prove such a negative as this, is on the face of the 

 matter absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility 

 to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a 

 material cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of 

 science will admit that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and 

 now more than ever means, the extension of what we call mat- 

 ter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from 

 all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spon- 

 taneity." 



