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channel that you may wish, and thus to render it available for 
the special purpose you may have in view. 
When the advocates of the physical theory of life speak of 
protoplasm assuming the marvellous forms of organised beings 
by means of an inherent power of its own, they are employing 
a scientific fallacy. It is all very well to tell us that the 
forces which reside in living protoplasm are but the forces, 
physical and chemical, that rule amongst the particles of dead 
matter, and are therefore derived from the sun. So they are ; 
nobody would think of denying it. The question to be solved 
is simply whether these forces constitute all that exists in 
living protoplasm, and to which its vital activity is due ? - 
The supporters of the physical theory of life say that they 
do, but in so saying they are proceeding upon the most im- 
probable of assumptions. The vital phenomena manifested 
by even the simplest mass of living protoplasm are out of 
all proportion in extent and variety to the external stimuli, 
which form the starting-point of most of these phenomena; 
and the same stimulus may give rise to very different pheno- 
mena in different masses of protoplasm, or in the same mass 
at different times. As has been well pointed out by Mr. 
Croll, however, nothing could be more unfounded than the 
assumption that the power which directs the molecular move- 
ments of protoplasm in one path rather than another, is itself 
the very molecular movements in question. When protoplasm 
is said, by its intrinsic “ directing power/’ to determine the 
motions of its molecules, and force these into certain paths or 
modes of motion, we are practically told that the production 
of force and the determination of force are the same thing, 
and that the action of a force can be determined by the same 
force. Without entering into the argument on this point, it 
may be said at once, however, that it can be logically demon- 
strated that “ the production of motion and the determination 
of motion are absolutely and essentially different/'’ and that 
“the action of a force cannot be determined by a force, nor 
can motion be determined by motion. - ” 
Before attempting to come to any conclusion as to the essen- 
tial nature of life, we may shortly consider one or two further 
points as to the connection which has been supposed to subsist 
between life and its physical basis or protoplasm, and also the 
extent to which vital phenomena may be supposed to be con- 
nected with organisation. As regards the first of these sub- 
jects, high authorities have at the present day declared them- 
selves in favour of the view that life is merely a property of 
protoplasm. In other words, it is asserted that life is the result 
of the combined properties of the elements which unite to form 
