80 
of external form. In crystals yon have the very reverse. But Professor 
Huxley need not have gone to oxide of hydrogen for his crystals when he had 
carbon at hand. When pure particles of carbon are allowed to come into 
contact they will crystallize just as much as the oxide of hydrogen. The 
diamond is nothing more than a crystal of the pure chemical agent carbon, 
and no doubt if oxygen, or hydrogen, or nitrogen could be sufficiently cooled 
or condensed, they would also obey the laws of crystals and crystallize. 
Similar substances which exist in a solid form do crystallize. We know 
that phosphorus, sulphur, gold, silver, iron, tin, lead — will crystallize according 
to certain laws, and there is reason to believe that crystallization is inherent 
in all dead matter. But when we come in contact with living matter, we 
come to something very different. Professor Huxley tells us that the great 
object of his science is to get rid of all these “ itys.” He wants to know if 
we ca,n take “aquosity” as a power existing in the water; and the first 
illustration he uses is, that if you take oxygen and hydrogen and mix them, 
they are only a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, but if you pass an electric 
spark through them, water is formed. He then asks if I know the modus 
operandi of that electric spark. I say I do not, but the electric spark is not 
the only thing that will produce that result. Any spark whatever will do it, 
for there is a law that if the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen, in proper pro- 
portions, are brought within a certain nearness of each other, whether by an 
electric spark or by a common light of any kind, they will combine and form 
water, that is an ordinary law of nature. If you put into that mixture of 
oxygen and hydrogen a little piece of a certain description of platinum, all 
the particles of which are in a spongy state — which allows a kind of capillary 
attraction, if I may so call it, to operate, — that has the power of bringing 
the two gases into contact with each other, combination takes place, and you 
have water formed. In the same way you have only to put into the mixture 
a piece of pure platinum, provided it is perfectly clean, and the same effect is 
produced. But is there anything in this at all analogous to living proto- 
plasm ? Does it go on producing water ? Is there any power in water like 
that? In the most insignificant form of protoplasm which you can deal 
with, you find you have something higher than chemical, mechanical, or 
molecular force. But you have not got rid of all the “ itys,” even according 
to Professor Huxley’s own illustration. He is obliged to have recourse to 
the “ itys.” He takes the oxygen and hydrogen, combining them in certain 
proportions by their weight: there you have an “ity” — gravity. Then by 
means of electricity — another “ ity” — he gets them to combine, and you have 
chemical affinity — a third “ ity.” So that we have three “ itys,” in his own 
illustration of the formation of that very thing in reference to which he 
scoffs at the term “ aquosity.” He has to admit the existence of three “itys” 
in that. But this is very important. I think there is something here which 
might have got the professor out of the slough of materialism, which he told 
his hearers he had led them into purposely in order that he might afterwards 
get them out of it. The whole argument of the paper is that, in the present 
state of modern science, men of science cannot go on in any other way than 
