222 
by recruits born in camp/^ This is an excellent idea for in- 
creasing the number of soldiers^ and may be recommended to 
the War OjBBce. 
In the body each cell is a soldier/^ says Mr. Huxley. If 
so^ I suppose each cell has the power of actings of displaying 
intelligence^ of obeying the word of command, and carrying 
out the orders of the general. In a few sentences further on, 
as well as in many papers he has written, he deprecates this 
view altogether, and talks about vital actions being nothing 
but changes of place of particles of matter,^^ and he looks 
forward to the analysis of the living protoplasm itself into 
a molecular mechanism.'’^ The body he regards as a syn- 
thesis of innumerable physiological elements,^^ each of which 
may be described ^‘'as protoplasm susceptible of structural 
metamorphosis and functional metabolism. 
After all our work, all our chemical, physical, and micro- 
scopical investigation — after all that has been gained by 
most minute and careful anatomical investigation carried on 
for many years, Mr. Huxley comes forward, and, in the 
most public manner possible, tells the world that the body 
is not like a watch, or a hydraulic apparatus, but an 
army — but such an army as never has existed and never 
could exist — an army not to be conceived by the imagina- 
tion, an army beyond all powers of reasonable conjecture; 
an army, the fighting power of , which would be destroyed 
not only by the birth of its recruits, but by the necessary 
phenomena which would precede that interesting event. 
But, alas ! this is not all, for this army of Professor Huxley’s, 
strange to say, is unfit to survive, for does he not tell us that 
it is certain of defeat in the long-run ? Professor Huxley’s 
army is not an army at all, but only an imaginary hetero- 
geneous collection of nebulous impossibihties. It is scarcely 
credible that such suggestions as those I have criticised could 
be seriously made in the presence of hundreds of representa- 
tive medical and scientific men from all parts of the world. 
You will, however, find them on p. 99 of vol. i. of the 
Transactions of the International Medical Congress. 
And what end is served by such comparisons ? Are we 
taught anything by such incongruous metaphors ? In what 
particular is any living thing like a watch, or a hydraulic 
apparatus, or an army ? There is not one of the ridiculous 
comparisons which have been made which helps any one to 
form an accurate notion of the nature of any living thing in 
existence. Half the utterances of this kind serve but to con- 
fuse and lead the mind away from the truth about life and 
the phenomena peculiar to living things. That all this loose. 
