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to ascertain its nature, and for this purpose we try, as we have tried 
in the case of the crystal, to dissolve it. What is the result ? W^e destroy 
it ; we do not dissolve it. It ceases to be living matter before solution 
begins. It is no longer what it was before, and we cannot make it so. 
It has gone ; it has ceased to be what it was, and we are not dealing with 
a living particle, but simply with the material that has resulted from the 
death of that which was before alive. W e cannot re-form it. Once dead, 
it is incapable of being re-produced. Therefore, it seems to me a most 
extraordinary thing that some of the greatest authorities in science should 
pretend to compare the formation of living matter with the formation of 
crystals. There is not the slightest analogy, nor the faintest possible parallel, 
no comparison between living things and crystals. There is all the differ- 
ence in the world between the process of crystallisation and the formation 
of living particles, which are supposed by Haeckel, and others who adopt 
his views, to be alike. Whatever may be the marvellous changes that 
occurred in the first formation of living matter, they cannot resemble in the 
slightest degree any phenomena with which we are familiar. There are 
no properties of matter that have as yet been discovered that can give us 
the faintest conception of the nature of the changes which must have taken 
place when the first living thing was formed. With regard to the question of 
complexity and simplicity, of which a good deal has been said, I will just offer 
a few remarks, and will then sit down. It seems to me to have been assumed 
in a most extraordinary way that some forms of living matter are extremely 
simple and that others are extremely complex. I should like to ask what is 
the meaning attached to these terms “ simplicity ” and “ complexity,” when 
applied to living matter ? Let us take the monera, said to be among the 
simplest forms of living matter with which we are acquainted. All we can 
see is clear, colourless, transparent, structureless, semifluid matter. Where 
is the evidence that the composition of this is more simple than that of the 
most complex living matter in existence ? Take, for example, the highest 
form of living matter we know — the living matter which forms part of the 
brain-cells of man himself, for I suppose we cannot conceive anything much 
higher. If we were to assume gradations of complexity and different degrees of 
superiority, we might go as far as to suggest that at any rate the highest and 
most complex living matter is to be found in the grey matter constituting the 
outer part of the human brain. But what is the fact ? The matter we find 
there is no more complex than the living matter of the simplest monad, as far, 
at least, as we know. If we take this brain matter and examine it, we find 
that we can resolve it into certain organic substances, closely allied to the 
albuminous material which Professor Huxley and others call protoplasm, 
although they are not able to define precisely what they mean by the 
term. They are unable to tell us in what way protoplasm differs 
from albumen, and muscle, tissue, and a thousand other things. They 
simply make use of a name almost without a meaning. Well, the highest 
conceivable form of living matter, as far as we know, closely accords in its 
composition with the lowest form of living matter ; and, as far as regards 
