the distinctions between Plant, Animal, and Man almost 
merge into perfect identity ; for example, the Amoeba is 
a shapeless mass of irritable Protoplasm apparently devoid 
of all organs ; yet it is an animal creature, eating without a 
stomach, moving without muscles and without limbs, feeling 
without nerves, breathing without lungs, and nourished with- 
out blood. There are also creatures, equally shapeless, com- 
posed of structureless protoplasm, alike irritable by virtue of 
their power to feel and move. Dr. Kiihne, of Leipsic, has 
already built them up into vegetable muscles, and can make 
them lift a weight, as though in grateful acknowledgment of 
their sensibility in feeling a galvanic shock; so that Plants, 
like Animals, move and feel ; and in both the cycle of Life 
comes round to a small dot in the ovule of the one, as in the 
ovum of the other. Still the life-story of the green-pond 
scum is not that of the grain of wheat ; neither is the heart of 
a fungus that of a man. Spirit, Mind, and Matter are not all 
identical ; for if in the world of materiality the human body, 
like other bodies, is built up of protoplasm, there is yet a 
world of Intellect, where all is mind to mind, as there is just 
as certainly a kingdom of spirits, where all is spirit to spirit. 
Identification of the human skull with the spinal vertebras of 
Apes does not account for Pure Reason : Thought and Reli- 
giosity in the soul of the former, and their significant absence 
in the brains of the latter. Protoplasm may, in short, be even 
“ the moving creature that hath life but it was not for that 
physical basis of Man that Christianity was actually founded 
upon the grave of the risen Saviour. His spiritual kingdom 
“is not of this world,” and is wholly independent of all the 
Races and Nations — both now and for ever. Surely the quid 
cst of spirit, whatever can be predicated thereof, as either 
descriptively or historically true, belongs properly to Spiritual 
Philosophy. The quid est of Mind belongs to Mental Science, 
just in the same way as the quid est , or what it is, of matter 
belongs to Physical Science. These sciences are wholly distinct 
from each other, yet have their respective truthful foundations 
in the nature and constitution of Man himself. No wonder, 
therefore, that the exclusive Materialist, in such one-sided 
circumstances, should discover only a beast origin for Man, 
and that vital and mental phenomena are but physical and 
chemical phenomena, and that all living organic beings, Man 
himself included, are comprised in one word — Protoplasm. 
17. Sometimes we meet with Professors of Science who are 
highly original in their suggestions, but singularly loose in veri- 
fymg them. Metaphysicians are said to “ assume ” the truth 
of everything, and to prove nothing ; yet Materialists might 
