426 A Speculation on Protoplasm. [July, 
the temperature is above the fusing point of platinum; there is no 
solid land that we know on which objects could stand, and if there 
were the weights of the bodies that we know would be so great 
at the surface of the sun that they would be crushed. That 
our feet would find no resting place, or if they did, our strength 
would be insufficient to bear up the tons which our bodies would 
then weigh, and even if this were not so, our C N O H bodies 
would be dissipated as gases. The reverse is the case in the cold 
cinders called asteroids. There the cold would instantly kill any 
living thing that we know. 
But what is there to preclude the possibility of living things 
colder than frozen mercury, or hotter than molten platinum. In 
fact since the only manifestation of vitality we can know is the 
action of force upon matter, until these two components are oblit- 
erated, how can one predict the extinction of life ? 
This has some bearing on the ever recurring questions of im- 
mortality or existence after visible disintegration. But up to this 
point it has been assumed that the external conditions were being 
changed with extreme slowness. If only this obtained, there 
would seem to be no positive improbability of life in beings com- 
posed wholly of liquids or gases. 
Of course it is to ridicule the subject to conceive a being 
whose epidermis of platinum resisted successfully the waste of 
oxidation even at the prevailing red heat, and whose stomach of 
porcelain would melt up the metallic silicates and send them 
coursing through wrought iron arteries to be assimilated into me- 
tallic or ceramic organs, and to pass through the usual stages of 
activity, decay, and re-utilization; while the siliceous brain and 
the asbestos nerves quivered with sensations of pleasure for- 
ever denied to us combustibles. Yet it is not too much to 
claim that no sufficient reason can be given for confining the ma- 
terial out of which sentient beings can be constructed to the four 
type elements above referred to; nor is there any reason appa- 
rent why a gradual change in the organs of assimilation as well 
as in the material assimilated should not accompany and com- 
pensate all gradual changes in the outside world, thus rendering 
the thread of life continuous through beings more diverse than 
any that we yet know. 
