634 British Association . [September 4 , 
cular contraction as a property of the protoplasm of the muscle ? 
or is it really a property residing in something far different, but 
which may yet need for its manifestation the activity of cerebral 
protoplasm ? 
If, said the President, we could see any analogy between 
thought and any one of the admitted phenomena of matter, we 
should be bound to accept the first of these conclusions as the 
simplest, and as affording a hypothesis most in accordance with 
the comprehensiveness of natural laws. But between thought 
and the phenomena of matter there is not only no analogy, but 
there is no conceivable analogy, and the path we have hitherto 
followed comes to an end. The chasm between unconscious life 
and thought is impassable ; for even from irritability, to which on 
a superficial view consciousness may seem related, it is as abso- 
lutely distinCt as it is from the ordinary phenomena of matter. 
It has been argued that because physiological activity must be a 
property of every living cell, psychical activity must be equally 
so ; the language of the metaphysician has been carried into 
biology, and the “ cell-soul ” spoken of as a conception insepa- 
rable from life. How far back in the scale of life consciousness 
may exist, we have no means of determining. But even admit- 
ting that every living cell were a conscious, thinking being, are 
we therefore justified in asserting that its consciousness, like its 
irritability, is a property of the matter of which it is composed ? 
The sole argument on which this view rests is that from analogy, 
and as there is an absence of all analogy between the things 
compared it must fall to the ground. 
Prof. Huxley, in his leCture on the “ Physical Basis of Life,’’ 
contended that no difference, however great, between the pheno- 
mena of living matter and those of the lifeless elements of which 
such matter is composed, should militate against our ascribing 
to protoplasm the phenomena of life as properties essentially in- 
herent in it ; since we know that the result of a combination of 
physical elements may exhibit physical properties totally different 
from those of such elements, the physical phenomena presented 
by water having, e.g ., no resemblance to those of oxygen and 
hydrogen, As regards the phenomena of life in the stricter 
sense of the word, the argument is conclusive. But if it be 
pushed further and extended to consciousness it loses all its 
force. 
That consciousness is never manifested except in the presence 
of cerebral matter or of something like it, there cannot be a 
question ; but this is a very different thing from its being a pro- 
perty of such matter in the sense in which polarity is a property 
of the magnet, or irritability of protoplasm. The generation cf 
the rays which lie invisible beyond the violet in the spedtrum of 
the sun cannot be regarded as a property of the medium which 
by changing their refrangibility can alone render them apparent. 
I know that there is a special charm in those broad generalisa- 
