Protoplasm. 1 39 



animal or vegetable. Accordingly, it has been 

 treated of by Professor Huxley as "the physical 

 basis of life." 



152. Here the interesting question arose, whether 

 a chemical compound of this kind, understood to 

 be composed like all organic matter of 



oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, re- ch emistry# 

 quired parental generation to produce it. 

 True, it was alive. But in its simplest forms it is not 

 embarrassed with any organs or local structures for 

 special work; it has no eyes, ears, mouth, stomach, 

 feet, head, or tail. Is not that the condition of 

 chemical elements, — they are unorganized and in- 

 organic? What prevents the unorganized proto- 

 plasm from being generated by the inorganic ele- 

 ments; the more so, as these are now compounded 

 in the laboratory to degrees of complexity more than 

 sufficient, it would seem, to equal this rude fabric 

 of cellular protoplasm? 



153. Unorganized and inorganic! You see room 

 here for a brilliant equivocation, one indeed that 

 went some way for a while towards electrifying an 

 enlightened age. Imagine the "inorganic" chem- 

 ical compound, which discharges no functions, 

 because forsooth it is not alive, becoming in the 

 chemist's hands live protoplasm, which is " unor- 

 ganized " also, though forsooth it discharges all 

 functions, and it moves and eats and digests and 

 sleeps, as higher structures do, though they do all 

 these things through a number of local organs. 



