
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. au 
that we must accept it as proper, and hence the word 
organised must apply to protoplasm. Therefore, Huxley’s 
expression ought to have been, ‘‘ Life without more or 
less rigid visible structure.’ The expression, ‘‘ Life 
results from organisation,” ought to be ‘“‘ Vitality results 
) 
from organism.” It is true that all organism is the 
result of a previous process of organisation, while we only 
know this latter as the work of a pre-existing organism, 
so that to discuss which was first seems as vain and futile 
as to raise the old question, Which was first, the egg or 
the bird? Suffice it to say now, we know of no organism 
which did not originate from a pre-existing organism 
through the process of organisation, and no passage of 
non-living matter into hving matter except through the 
erowth of already living matter. Science affords no data 
for any, even plausible, conjectures as to any natural process 
to account for the origin of living matter on our planet. 
I think we must be content to follow Darwin,* in seeing 
in it the direct interference of the hand of the Creator. 
Another expression, arising from speculations on the 
origin of life, which I cannot admit to be correct, is 
‘“organisable protoplasm,” used by Gavarret and Herbert 
Spencer. Protoplasm cannot be protoplasm till it is 
organised, and all pabulum is organisable already. 
With respect to the word protoplasm, the time seems to 
be now come when it can be said to be universally adopted 
as synonymous with the living matter. In that case 
biologists should agree to restrict the word rigidly to the 
ideal living matter alone, and never apply it to a variety 
molecular organisation which might be called atomic rather than molecular. 
At any rate the words organisation and organism must apply to the composition 
of the new molecules constituting protoplasm, and not to a mere altered 
grouping of any proteid molecules known in the laboratory. 
* ‘*Origin of Species,” 6th Ed. p. 429; 
