IRLF 
 
 B 3 EMfl 11D 
 
 7 
 
 f:j 
 
 s. 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Received - .. //^ ^ 188 & 
 
 A 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING, 
 
 F.R.C.S., AND LL.D., EDIN. 
 
 and Jmpptud (Bdttun, 
 
 COMPLETED BY ADDITION OP 
 
 PART II., 
 
 IN REFERENCE TO MR HUXLEY'S SECOND ISSUE, 
 
 AND OF 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 IN EEPLY TO ME HUXLEY IN " YEAST." 
 
 LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 1872. 
 [All lights Reserved.] 
 
57 
 
 D10LOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 G 
 
 COLSTON & SON, LAW AM) GENERAL PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
TJNiOBSITY 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 WHEN this Essay was first published, the following was the 
 prefatory note (October 1869) : 
 
 " The substance of the greater part of this paper, which has 
 been in the present form for some time, was delivered, as a 
 lecture, at a Conversazione of the Royal College of Physicians 
 of Edinburgh, in the Hallof the College, on the evening of Friday, 
 the 30th of April last. 
 
 It will be found to support itself, so far as the facts are con- 
 cerned, on the most recent German physiological literature, as 
 represented by Rindfleisch, Kiihne, and especially Strieker, with 
 which last, for the production of his * Handbuch,' there is as- 
 sociated every great histological name in Germany." 
 
 I may now state, without any more particular reference to 
 the motives, whether general or special, which gave rise to it, 
 that this essay of mine had but one thing to do. to protest, 
 namely, against the thoughtless extinction of certain essential 
 differences in a supposed common identity. I may illustrate this 
 by a remark in a letter to me on the subject by the late lamented 
 Professor Ueberweg, which (the letter itself is dated Jan. 16, 
 1870) is as follows : " As I am neither a physiologist nor a 
 zoologist, I cannot be expected to follow your argument 
 into its details, but I am vividly interested by its logical 
 or dialectical leading thought the contention, namely, for the 
 right of the logical category of Difference, as against that of 
 Identity one-sidedly accentuated, as it seems, by Huxley." My 
 reply to this was, " that he (Ueberweg) had hit the mark that 
 I had been simply laughing all through, and holding up to the 
 category of identity, the equally authentic category of difference 
 but that it had taken a German to find me out." 
 
 In the same letter, Ueberweg proceeded to say that the 
 question, in the first place, therefore, was evidently a logical one. 
 Now this, doubtless, is true ; but this, nevertheless, is not 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 enough. If the question involves at bottom logical issues, it 
 has been really addressed by Mr Huxley to physiological ones ; 
 and it is only in the interest of scientific accuracy to point out 
 that the inference to a physiological identity has been attempted 
 to be made good by Mr Huxley, solely through means of an 
 unwarrantable trampling out of (perhaps, for the moment, in- 
 voluntary blindness to) the most essential physiological differ- 
 ences. For example, if you identify all life in protoplasm, the 
 counter-reminder is only fair that you must equally differentiate 
 all life in protoplasms; for of no one living thing, and of the 
 organs of no one living thing, is the protoplasm interchangeable 
 with that of another ; and this involves, instead of Mr Huxley's 
 universal identity in power, in form, and in substance, infinite 
 difference in all these respects. 
 
 In the statement of this difference which is really a veritable 
 scientific interest I was led into a variety of expositions, and, 
 among these, into an historical one. So far, now, as it was 
 history that was concerned in this, I could not, of course, in one 
 way, take any credit to myself; still it was precisely here that, in 
 another way, I did think I might take some little credit to 
 myself. If in the course of the essay, indeed, there was any- 
 thing else that seemed to me similarly situated, it was the 
 summaries the summaries of Mr Huxley's views, namely, with 
 which I always prefaced my criticism of these. I confess that I 
 thought them exact short, that is, to the shortest, but full to 
 the fullest, and certainly fair to the fairest, if not also clear to 
 the clearest. It has pleased Mr Huxley, however, rudely to 
 shock my not immoderate complacency in both respects. 
 Neither history nor summaries, it seems, can he regard with 
 satisfaction. That is, it was alone for what was not mine in the 
 whole essay that I allowed myself to take any credit as mine, 
 and this Mr Huxley denies me. In the reply, namely, to which, 
 after two years' interval, he has at length brought himself, it 
 has pleased Mr Huxley in those few sour-humoured words of 
 his in the Contemporary Review for December 1871 to call the 
 history a " travesty," and (by implication) the summaries " utter 
 misrepresentations." That Mr Huxley, fairly looking at either 
 history or summaries, should yet feel himself free to speak so, 
 throws me back I confess it on thoughts of him. 
 
 If, as I say, the summaries could not, as wholly referring to 
 the matter of another, be called my own, so neither could the 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 history be called my own, and for a like reason. Nevertheless, 
 as I also say, I had such consciousness of honest work in either 
 respect, that I could not help allowing myself a certain satisfac- 
 tion in both. The grounds, more especially for this as regards 
 the history the summaries I dismiss for the present lay as 
 well in the pains that still throbbed before consciousness, as in 
 the fact that the narrative involved was known to me to be then 
 only for the first time presented in English.* I fancied, indeed, 
 that Mr Huxley himself would applaud here, for I believed him 
 partial to a scientific historiette. Had I but known that he had 
 in petto a rival history 1 I confess I had no anticipations of this : 
 and, as to that indeed, perhaps he had it not in petto. Perhaps 
 Mr Huxley has only benevolently got it up since for my correc- 
 tion by example of him ? There at least it is my historiette is 
 a " travesty," it seems, and Mr Huxley, in the pages of the 
 Contemporary Review, replaces it by his. Loudly! Ay, Mr 
 Huxley, I venture to say, is not less loud here than the legitimate 
 blind beggar whom Mr Home represents to abuse the interlop- 
 ing one thus : 
 
 " I am the genuine blind man, 
 That villain seeks to grind one, 
 
 And poach one's field ; 
 
 But I'll not yield, 
 What ! leave old rights behind one ! 
 
 " / am the real blind man, 
 The genuine real blind man ! 
 
 As for that thief 
 
 With eyes, may grief 
 Consume him ! / am the blind man !" 
 
 But it will be only fair to Mr Huxley that the readers of the 
 present essay should see his objections to it in his own words. 
 The yeast-organism affording him an exceedingly eligible start- 
 ing-ground for his lively representative ways, Mr Huxley begins 
 with it, and is thereby enabled to give a little, not unwelcome, 
 additional show of bulk to after all the somewhat scanty 
 historical forces he has only desperately driven together. With 
 these skilful preliminary dispositions, the attack itself and in 
 its entirety is this : 
 
 " Dr Stirling, for example, made my essay the subject of a 
 
 * By way of indirect testimony here, let me refer to an eminent physiological Pro- 
 fessor who, on a late occasion, speaking of protoplasm, before the British Association, 
 displayed this severe impartiality between us that, while he gave my account of proto- 
 plasm, it was Mr Huxley alone he named / 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 special critical lecture, which I have read with much interest, 
 though, I confess, the meaning of much of it remains as dark to 
 me as does the ' Secret of Hegel,' after Dr Stirling's elaborate 
 revelation of it. Dr Stirling's method of dealing with the sub- 
 ject is peculiar. * Protoplasm' is a question of history, so far as 
 it is a name ; of fact, so far as it is a thing. Dr Stirling has 
 not taken the trouble to refer to the original authorities for his 
 history, which is consequently a travesty ; and, still less, has he 
 concerned himself with looking at the facts, but contents him- 
 self with taking them also at second hand. A most amusing 
 example of this fashion of dealing with scientific statements is 
 furnished by Dr Stirling's remarks upon my account of the 
 protoplasm of the nettle hair. That account was drawn up 
 from careful and often-repeated observation of the facts. Dr 
 Stirling thinks he is offering a valid criticism, when he says that 
 my valued friend, Professor Strieker, gives a somewhat different 
 statement about protoplasm. But why in the world did not 
 this distinguished Hegelian look at a nettle hair for himself, 
 before venturing to speak about the matter at all 1 Why trouble 
 himself about what either Strieker or I say, when any tyro can 
 see the facts for himself, if he is provided with those not rare 
 articles a nettle and a microscope ? But I suppose this would 
 have been 'Aufkldrung ' a recurrence to the base common-sense 
 philosophy of the eighteenth century, which liked to see before 
 it believed, and to understand before it criticised. Dr Stirling 
 winds up his paper with the following paragraph : ' In short, 
 the whole position of Mr Huxley, (1) that all organisms consist 
 alike of the same life-matter, (2) which life-matter is, for its 
 part, due only to chemistry, must be pronounced untenable 
 nor less untenable (3) the materialism he would found on it.' 
 
 " The paragraph contains three distinct assertions concerning 
 my views, and just the same number of utter misrepresenta- 
 tions of them. That which I have numbered (1) turns on the 
 ambiguity of the word ' same,' for a discussion of which I 
 would refer Dr Stirling to a great hero of * AufkldrungJ Arch- 
 bishop Whately; statement number (2) is, in my judgment, 
 absurd; and certainly I have never said anything resembling 
 it; while, as to number (3), one great object of my essay was 
 to show that what is called ' materialism ' has no sound philo- 
 sophical basis ! " 
 
 Now this, so far as it is anything, is, as one sees, clever ; but it 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 is not an answer : it is only business. " My flock will expect a word 
 from me, and will probably not be the worse of one: it will be, 
 so far, a satisfaction to them, and convenient in use, perhaps I" 
 
 Be the nature of the cle verity what it may, then, one must 
 pity the necessity of the shift; and, but for Mr Huxley's 
 authority with the public an authority quite just in its place, 
 doubtless the record, so far as I am concerned, might very 
 w r ell close here. That authority considered, however, perhaps 
 it would be only duly respectful to the public and even to Mr 
 Huxley himself that I should examine his observations in reply 
 to my essay seriatim and at full. This, then, I shall* now do. 
 
 To begin at the end, and travel gradually upwards, I must 
 avow that it is certainly clever to take the three short clauses 
 of the short concluding sentence of my essay as together repre- 
 sentative of the whole, and so, in destroying them, destroy it ! 
 There is management in this especially in view of Dr Beale's 
 quotation of the sentence ; but the question remains has Mr 
 Huxley destroyed, not my essay, but even this its short last 
 sentence ? 
 
 His answer to my proposition that assumes him to hold " that 
 all organisms consist alike of the same life-matter," is only that 
 it turns on the ambiguity of the word " same." Will it be 
 possible to make this good, however? Does Mr Huxley try it? 
 Or is the reference to Whately enough for that ? As for the 
 word " same," I do not believe it to occur more than twice or 
 thrice throughout the whole essay: identity is the term I use 
 for the most part. I have no objection to the word, however, 
 and think it perfectly justifiable: identity itself is certainly 
 sameness. But more I shall accept Mr Huxley's reference to 
 the authority of Archbishop Whately in regard to it, and the 
 ambiguity of its two senses. Of these, the primary one is that 
 of numerical sameness, " applicable," says Whately, " to a single 
 object;" as, I wore to-day the same boots I wore yesterday, 
 meaning, of course, the same individual boots. In reference to 
 the secondary one, again, the Archbishop's words are these: 
 " When several objects are undistinguishably alike, one single 
 description will apply equally to any of them ; and thence they 
 are said to be all of one and the same nature, appearance, etc. : 
 as e.g. when we say, this house is built of the same stone with 
 such another, we only mean that the stones are undistinguish- 
 able in their qualities; not that the one building was pulled 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 down, and the other constructed with the materials." Now, 
 this latter sense is the sense in which Mr Huxley, I, and every- 
 body else, for the most part, use the word; but whether Mr 
 Huxley, I, or anybody else use the word, the context will 
 always show if it be the rarer, primary, numerical sense that is 
 intended or not. Does Mr Huxley insinuate that I represent 
 him as arguing that the protoplasm of this monkey is numeri- 
 cally the same as the protoplasm of that man? I feel sure that 
 it is impossible for either of us to be so absurd. But if he does 
 not mean that, what can he mean by the ambiguity he flourishes, 
 and his reference to Archbishop Whately ? Whatever he means, 
 I take him at his word; I tell him that, when he holds all 
 living things to consist of the " same " protoplasm, " same " is 
 not to him the term as used in Whately's primary, but as used 
 in Whately's secondary sense ; I tell him also that as it is to 
 him, so it is to me. According to Whately, when we say, " this 
 house is built of the same stone with such another, we merely 
 mean that the stones are undistinguishable in their qualities :" 
 similarly Mr Huxley, when he said that all life was built of the 
 same protoplasm, meant it to be understood that the protoplasms 
 were " undistinguishable in their qualities ; " and using words 
 quite in his own sense it was that I denied. Ambiguity there 
 was none, and Archbishop Whately, Mr Huxley's own reference, 
 but proves my case. Consider one or two of Mr Huxley's own 
 phrases ! " There is such a thing as a physical basis or matter 
 of life ; " . . . . or " the physical basis or matter of life." 
 There is " a single physical basis of life," and through its unity 
 " the whole living world " is pervaded by " a three-fold unity " 
 " namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a 
 unity of substantial composition." With such expressions ring- 
 ing in our ears and they occur on every page which of us, Mr 
 Huxley or I, shall be said to be the one who rather pushes identity? 
 Omitting the deep logical question that lies at the bottom of 
 all, may I not say, then, that my whole argument is a completely 
 valid and scientific one, founded on scientific difference as 
 opposed to Mr Huxley's argument from scientific identity ? 
 And, in short, in attempting to stamp out all essential differ- 
 ences in the one non-existent identity of a vital matter, has not 
 Mr Huxley simply deluded himself? If I only hold up, then, 
 the difference he ignores to the identity he proclaims, that is much 
 more than the " ambiguity" of the word " same." 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 In answer to my proposition which speaks of " life-matter " as, 
 in Mr Huxley's belief, "due only to chemistry," Mr Huxley affirms 
 "statement number (2) is, in my judgment, absurd ; and cer- 
 tainly I have never said anything resembling it." One is pleased 
 to think that Mr Huxley has now come to consider such an 
 opinion " absurd," but " certainly I have never said anything re- 
 sembling it ! " Mr Huxley, for aught I know, may have some 
 quibble in his mind about the phrase " due to chemistry ; " but 
 he has always, and everywhere, for all that, described his " life- 
 matter as due to chemistry," and here are a few examples : 
 
 " If the properties of water may be properly said to result 
 from the nature and disposition of its component molecules, I 
 can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the pro- 
 perties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of 
 its molecules." 
 
 Is it possible for words more definitely to convey the state- 
 ment that the properties of water and protoplasm are precisely 
 on the same level, and that as the former are of molecular 
 (physical, chemical) origin, so are the latter ? Again, after having 
 told us that protoplasm is carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, 
 " which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary 
 matter," he proceeds to speak as follows: 
 
 " Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless 
 bodies. Of these carbon and oxygen unite in certain propor- 
 tions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid ; 
 hydrogen and oxygen produce water ; nitrogen and hydrogen 
 give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the elemen- 
 tary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless." 
 
 So far then, surely, I am allowed to say that these new com- 
 pounds are due to chemistry. Observe now what follows : 
 
 "But when they" (the compounds) "are brought together, 
 under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex 
 body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of 
 life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular compli- 
 cation, and I am unable to understand why the language which 
 is applicable to any one term of the series, may not be used to 
 any of the others." 
 
 Here, evidently, I am ordered by Mr Huxley himself, not to 
 change my language, but to characterise these latter results as 
 I characterised those former ones. If I spoke then of ammonia, 
 etc., as due to chemistry, so must I now speak of protoplasm, 
 
10 PREFACE. 
 
 life-matter, as due to chemistry a statement which Mr Huxley 
 not only orders me to make, but makes himself. Very curious all 
 this, then. When I do what he bids me do, when I say what he 
 says that if ammonia, etc., are due to chemistry, protoplasm is 
 also due to chemistry Mr Huxley turns round and calls out 
 that I am saying an "absurdity," which he, for his part, 
 " certainly never said ! " But let me make just one other 
 quotation : 
 
 " When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain propor- 
 tion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they dis- 
 appear, and a quantity of water equal in weight to the sum of 
 their weights appears in their place." 
 
 Now, no one in his senses will dispute that this is a question 
 of chemistry, and of nothing but chemistry ; but it is Mr Huxley 
 himself who asks in immediate and direct reference here : 
 
 " Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, 
 and ammonia disappear, and in their place, under the influence 
 of pre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the 
 matter of life makes its appearance ?" 
 
 Surely Mr Huxley has no object whatever here but to place 
 before us the genesis of protoplasm, and surely also this genesis 
 is a purely chemical one 1 The very " influence of pre-existing 
 living protoplasm," which pre-existence could not itself exist for 
 the benefit of the first protoplasm that came into existence, is 
 asserted to be in precisely the same case with reference to the 
 one process as that of the electric spark with reference to the 
 other. And yet, in the teeth of such passages, Mr Huxley feels 
 himself at liberty to say now, " statement number (2) is, in my 
 judgment, absurd, and certainly I have never said anything resem- 
 bling it" It is a pity to see a man in the position of Mr Huxley 
 so strangely forget himself! 
 
 Mr Huxley's next charge of " utter misrepresentation " on my 
 part is, that I have talked of him as founding materialism, while 
 it was " one great object" with him to resist it ! I have been quite 
 explicit everywhere as to Mr Huxley's double issue ; but in the 
 passage he refers to, I have only his first issue in consideration, 
 as is the pitch of my essay in its first form generally indeed* 
 and as is perfectly well known to Mr Huxley. To attempt to 
 hide his first issue from himself, then, he can hide it from nobody 
 elge by thrusting his head into the second, is but the sagacity 
 of the ostrich. Seeing, however, that he resents my want of 
 
PREFACE. \ 1 
 
 complete and formal analysis of the second or philosophical part 
 of his essay, I have, in this edition, added it. 
 
 It is not every gentleman who allows himself so lightly such 
 heavy weapons as " titter misrepresentations ; " and I can only 
 say, as regards them all, that I am really sorry Mr Huxley 
 should have so indulged himself. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind, too, that Mr Huxley's critique, as 
 above resisted, applies not to my essay, but to its short last 
 sentence ; which sentence, by the bye, happens (though I by no 
 means disown, but completely homologate it) to have been a mere 
 addition to the proof of my manuscript. Even so, he who reads 
 again said last sentence, will find Mr Huxley's objections not 
 only to be but word-deep mere catch-words, then, but to 
 glance from the surface, without a scratch. 
 
 Passing now, then, from these three main and summarising 
 objections of Mr Huxley's, I shall consider the others, taking 
 them as they come in the extract, but, as said, in a course 
 upwards. 
 
 The first that so comes concerns the nettle hair. I shall have 
 contented myself, it seems, with taking my facts " at second 
 
 hand." " A most amusing example," etc " but why in 
 
 the world did not this distinguished Hegelian look at a nettle 
 hair for himself? " Now, my single action being only to oppose 
 difference to identity, I contend that, if, of the nettle hair, 
 Strieker said A while Huxley said B, I had a perfect warrant to 
 point out as much let my own results of examination of the 
 nettle hair have been what they might, and for the obvious 
 reason that the known Strieker was an authority, whereas I, 
 unknown, was none. But all that is beside the point, and I seize 
 Mr Huxley here in the act, as is usual with him in my case, of 
 mere word-catching. I do not meet Mr Huxley's description of 
 the protoplasm of the nettle hair by Strieker's description in 
 the same reference. My action, on the contrary, is this : To Mr 
 Huxley's description of protoplasm in general, I oppose Strieker's 
 description of protoplasm equally in general, and 1 point to the 
 difference between them. Mr Huxley will probably exclaim, 
 But it was the protoplasm of the nettle hair / described ! To 
 this my answer is, Yes ; but you immediately proceeded, and at 
 great length, to identify all protoplasm with that of the nettle 
 hair ; and, therefore, I was perfectly warranted in assuming your 
 description of the protoplasm of the nettle hair in the first 
 
12 PREFACE. 
 
 instance, to be your description also of protoplasm in general 
 and in all instances. Reference to a sentence or two will prove 
 this : " Not the sting only," Mr Huxley tells us, " but the whole 
 substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of such masses 
 of nucleated protoplasm." Further, possession is expressly 
 inferred " by many other organic forms " of such protoplasm as 
 is possessed by the nettle ; and when he talks of " the com- 
 parison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal cir- 
 culation," " put forward by an eminent physiologist," he has no 
 idea whatever, he says, of confining this comparison to the 
 protoplasm of the nettle sting. He says also : " Currents 
 similar to those of the hairs of the nettle have been observed 
 in a great multitude of very different plants, and weighty 
 authorities have suggested that they probably occur in more or 
 less perfection in all young vegetable cells." And, immediately 
 thereafter, in a burst of poetry as exuberant as the very vegeta- 
 tion he describes, he proceeds as follows : " If such be the 
 case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, 
 due only to the dulness of our hearing and could our ears catch 
 the murmurs of these tiny Maelstroms, as they whirl in the 
 innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we 
 should be stunned as with the roar of a great city" Surely there 
 is here an extension ample enough to warrant me in assuming 
 Mr Huxley to believe the same description to apply to proto- 
 plasm in general, which applied to the nettle hair in particular. 
 But the main interest turned on circulation : that Strieker denied 
 to exist in protoplasm in general. Was I wrong, then, in an 
 argument that sought only an accumulation of differences, to 
 quote, as opposing Mr Huxley's so unexceptive authority for 
 circulation, Strieker's equally decided authority against it? 
 Why, too, should Mr Huxley cry shame on me for adducing 
 the evidence of authorities, and not of my own eyes ? Had he 
 himself not already set me the example? What are these 
 " weighty authorities " he alludes to, and what is the effect of 
 them ? Is not that effect to " commend the poisoned chalice to 
 his own lips ? " " Why in the world did not this distinguished " 
 Biologist "look for himself" at all these " young vegetable 
 cells " and " tropical forests," " before venturing to speak a 
 word about the matter at all ? " 
 
 But I have not yet given Mr Huxley's description of proto- 
 plasm one half the extension he himself gives it. " The proto- 
 
THR 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 plasm of Algae and Fungi," he tells us, " exhibits 
 of its whole mass." Further still, he asserts of these phenomena 
 that, " so far as they have been studied," " they are the same 
 for the animal as for the plant." He says also of the white 
 corpuscles of the blood, " The substance which is thus active is 
 a mass of protoplasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather 
 than in principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle." 
 Then, "beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusc, worm, and 
 polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character, 
 namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus." Lastly, read 
 this : " The nettle arises, as the man does, in a mass of nucleated 
 protoplasm ! " After such enormous extension of the analogy 
 of the nettle hair on* the part of Mr Huxley, I really do not 
 think I have any reason to apologise to him for regarding his 
 description of nettle protoplasm as applicable to protoplasm in 
 general, and for opposing to his expressions in that reference, 
 Strieker's in the same. Mr Huxley, then, must consent to be 
 self-convicted, not only of incautious word-catching here, but 
 of being his own " most amusing example," for, as we have 
 already seen, he appeals to authorities, when he might have used 
 his oiun eyes. 
 
 Mr Huxley's next stroke of the knife, so far as attempt goes, 
 is : 
 
 " Dr Stirling has not taken the trouble to refer to the original 
 authorities for his history, which is consequently a travesty." 
 
 One sees how much the "history" sticks in Mr Huxley's 
 gorge ! The authorities I specially name, however, are Rind- 
 fleisch, Kiihne, and Strieker ; these, surely, are original autho- 
 rities (though necessarily not all the original authorities in 
 existence), for they have all contributed something (Kiihne is 
 about the greatest living name) to the actual march of the 
 science in question ; and, surely also, they are, historically, the 
 very strongest authorities that it is possible to mention. These 
 three names I have used as vouchers for the correctness of my 
 narrative ; are we to understand that Mr Huxley impugns 
 them? Strieker's "Handbuch," to which I "especially" refer, 
 is now in English ; and all, or all but all, the testimony I can 
 possibly need will be found there. There indeed, substantially, 
 is the same history that I have given ; shall we understand Mr 
 Huxley to call this " history " a " travesty," on the part of 
 " his valued friend, Professor Strieker ? " " Substantially " I say, 
 
14 PREFACE. 
 
 and reference to sources on my part has been frank from the first. 
 Nevertheless, this " substantially " does not wholly deny to me 
 all grounds for complacency in my own work, and in regard to 
 facts that were then for the first time communicated to English- 
 men. But more, though I referred to these three names only 
 as my supporting authorities for the history in question, that 
 "history" itself, beginning with Hunter, passes through the 
 names of Schleiden, Miiller, Brown, Valentin, Schwann, Virchow, 
 Leydig, Bergmann, Haeckel, Dujardin, Remak, and, alluding to 
 Meyen, Siebold, Reichert, Ecker, Henle, Kolliker, Beale, Huxley, 
 and John Goodsir, ends with to my mind, the three greatest and 
 latest names in this connection Briicke, Kiihne, and Max Schultze. 
 Now, though and like Mr Huxley, I am professionally educated 
 I cannot profess to have read all the works this* list indicates 
 (who can *?), yet surely, if in view of nothing but said education, 
 I must have read some of them,* and surely these are the " ori- 
 ginal authorities ! " On that head I appeal to my own referees, 
 and as to the meagre half-dozen names mentioned by Mr 
 Huxley in his rival history, I would not think it desirable to admit 
 into my own history a single one of them, unless, perhaps, that 
 of Cohn. Mr Huxley opines that " Dr Stirling's method of deal- 
 ing with the subject is peculiar." I rather think, however, that 
 my reader will now transfer the stricture, and wonder at the 
 power of countenance that could lead any man to say "travesty " 
 in such a case. 
 
 I have now to thank Mr Huxley for having read my essay 
 " with much interest." Interest on his part in any writing of 
 mine I must hold to be a distinguished compliment. All the 
 more, then, is my regret that " much of it " should remain as 
 " dark " to him as " does the ' Secret of Hegel.' " Perhaps it 
 may be natural in me, with my own progeny before me, to 
 wonder how this should 'be in either case, but I cannot omit 
 acknowledging the singular good nature and loyalty of the refer- 
 ence in the latter of them. Still, somehow, I have that confid- 
 ence in the excellent faculty of Mr Huxley, that I must think he 
 does himself injustice here. I cannot believe my essay not to 
 have proved sun-clear to him everywhere, unless in the wee, 
 
 * Surely I may have consulted all of them I ought to add, perhaps. At least it 
 is not usual for one medical brother to deny another the freedom of the guild. Else- 
 where, of course, Mr Huxley has so good a right to be proud of his own possession of 
 "a nettle and a microscope," that I cannot resent his denial of "those not rare 
 articles " to me. 
 
PREFACE. 15 
 
 wee bit into which the word idea entered, for a moment, with a 
 somewhat Hegelian shade. Might I venture to hint, too, that 
 Mr Huxley, if he still honours me with his interest, may find 
 every difficulty in all these references dispelled in the popular 
 statement (only fifteen pages long) of my first lecture on the 
 Philosophy of Law? 
 
 I have given my reader the opportunity of seeing for himself 
 every direct word that concerns me in Mr Huxley's essay, and 
 I know but a single indirect one. That, too, I shall not with- 
 hold ; it is this. The words immediately preceding the direct 
 ones I have extracted, refer to " quite superfluous explosions on 
 the part of some who should have been better informed " (then 
 follow, as already quoted, " Dr Stirling, for example" etc.) ; and 
 perhaps I shall not be wrong in taking this as an intimation on 
 Mr Huxley's part, that / (the " for example ") should have been 
 " better informed." Well, it is a consummation always devoutly 
 to be wished ; but where, may I be allowed to ask, ought I, in 
 this matter, to be "better informed?" That protoplasm, for 
 example, was no longer an infinite variety of different cells, but 
 an indifferent one material, as it were, in web ? Well per- 
 haps so but how then about the Germans 1 Really, where 
 ought I in this matter to be better informed ? but no ! I will 
 not press farther this rhetorical hack I I will not as much as 
 speak of Mr Huxley's poetry of giant Californian pines and 
 Indian figs no ! not even of the " great Finner whale, hugest of 
 beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety 
 feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in 
 which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard," etc. Did my 
 
 reader ever hear of " the great ring-tailed bab-boon from " 
 
 But no ! I will refrain. Mr Huxley writes always an excellent 
 clear English, and he does not generally yield to the charlatan- 
 ism of the platform. 
 
 It would probably be now in place for me, as against such 
 serious charges as " travesty " and " utter misrepresentation," 
 to bring forward the counter-testimony of other experts of equal, 
 or perhaps higher, rank than even Mr Huxley. This, too, I will 
 now forego. I will refer only to Beale, Bastian, Gamgee, to Dr 
 John Brown, to Dr Hodge of Princeton ; and I will quote, in 
 allusion to my essay, this single sentence from Sir John 
 Herschel : 
 
16 PREFACE. 
 
 " Anything more complete and final in the way of refutation than 
 this Essay, I cannot well imagine." 
 
 On the whole, perhaps it would have been as well if Mr 
 Huxley had not found it necessary to say anything more in this 
 matter, whether for " his own," or for or against anybody else. 
 At all events, " travesty " and " utter misrepresentation " return 
 straight home to the nest that hatched them. 
 
 In a business reference, perhaps I may be allowed to add that 
 I sincerely apologise to the public for the length of time this 
 little essay (though republished in America) has been kept out 
 of print in Great Britain. That I was not the blameable cause 
 of this admits of an easy explanation. The public, too, will 
 perhaps kindly excuse the augmented price of the present 
 edition in consideration of the increase of matter it contains, as 
 well as of the fact that, at the price put upon it, the first edition 
 did not pay expenses. The very convincing proof of this is 
 that my late very liberal publishers, though they sold an edition 
 of 750 copies in a few months, found it necessary not only to 
 divide nothing, but to apply to me for three-and-fi'pence, which 
 had been expended in postage stamps. 
 
 J. HUTCHISON STIELING. 
 
 MARCH, 1872. 
 
'UNIVERSITY; 
 > 
 
 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE FIRST (PHYSIOLOGICAL) ISSUE ; OR THE " PLUNGE " INTO THE 
 " MATERIALISTIC SLOUGH." 
 
 IT is a pleasure to perceive Mr Huxley open his clear little 
 essay with what we may hold, perhaps, to be the manly 
 and orthodox view of the character and products of the French 
 writer, Auguste Comte. " In applying the name of ' the new 
 philosophy' to that estimate of the limits of philosophical in- 
 quiry which he " (Professor Huxley), " in common with many 
 other men of science, holds to be just," the Archbishop of York 
 confounds, it seems, this new philosophy with the Positive 
 philosophy of M. Comte ; and thereat Mr Huxley expresses him- 
 self as greatly astonished. Some of us, for our parts, may be 
 inclined at first to feel astonished at Mr Huxley's astonishment ; 
 for the school to which, at least on the philosophical side, Mr 
 Huxley seems to belong, is even notorious for its prostration 
 before Auguste Comte, whom, especially so far as method and 
 systematisation are concerned, it regards as the greatest in- 
 tellect since Bacon. For such, as it was the opinion of Mr 
 Buckle, is understood to be the opinion also of Messrs Grote, 
 Bain, and Mill. In fact, we may say that such is commonly and 
 currently considered the characteristic and distinctive opinion 
 of that whole perverted or inverted reaction which has been 
 called the Revulsion. That is to say, to give this word a 
 moment's explanation, that the Voltaires and Humes and Gib- 
 bons having long enjoyed an immunity of sneer at man's blind 
 pride and wretched superstition at his silly non-natural honour 
 and her silly non-natural virtue a reaction had set in, exulting 
 in poetry, in the splendour of nature, the nobleness of man, and 
 the purity of woman, from which reaction again we have, almost 
 within the last decennium, been revulsively, as it were, called 
 back, shall we say by some " bolder " spirits the Buckles, the 
 
 B 
 
18 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 Mills, etc.? to the old illumination or enlightenment of a 
 hundred years ago, in regard to the weakness and stupidity of 
 man's pretensions over the animality and materiality that limit 
 him. Of this revulsion, then, as said, a main feature, especially 
 in England, has been prostration before the vast bulk of Comte ; 
 and so it was that Mr Huxley's protest in this reference, con- 
 sidering the philosophy he professed, had that in it to surprise 
 at first. But if there was surprise, there was also pleasure ; for 
 Mr Huxley's estimate of Comte is undoubtedly the right one. 
 " So far as I am concerned," he says, " the most reverend pre- 
 late" (the Archbishop of York) "might dialectically hew M. 
 Comte in pieces as a modern Agag, and I should not attempt 
 to stay his hand ; for, so far as my study of what specially 
 characterises the Positive philosophy has led me, I find therein 
 little or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal 
 which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of 
 science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism." "It was 
 enough," he says again, "to make David Hume turn in his 
 grave, that here, almost within earshot of his house, an in- 
 structed audience should have listened without a murmur while 
 his most characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French 
 writer of fifty years' later date, in whose dreary and verbose 
 pages we miss alike the vigour of thought and the exquisite 
 clearness of style of the man whom I make bold to term the 
 most acute thinker of the eighteenth century even though 
 that century produced Kant." 
 
 Of the doctrines themselves which are alluded to here, I shall 
 say nothing now ; but of much else that is said, there is only to 
 be expressed a hearty and even gratified approval. I demur, 
 to be sure, to the exaltation of Hume over Kant high as I 
 place the former. Hume, with infinite fertility, surprised us, 
 it may be said, perhaps, into attention on a great variety of 
 points which had hitherto passed unquestioned; but, even on 
 these points, his success was of an interrupted, scattered, and 
 inconclusive nature. He set the world adrift, but he set man 
 too, reeling and miserable, adrift with it. Kant, again, with 
 gravity and reverence, desired to refix, but in purity and truth, 
 all those relations and institutions which alone give value to 
 existence which alone are humanity, in fact but which Hume, 
 with levity and mockery, had approached to shake. Kant built up 
 again an entire new world for us of knowledge and duty, and, in a 
 certain way, even belief; whereas Hume had sought to dispossess 
 us of every support that man as man could hope to cling to. In 
 a word, with at least equal fertility, Kant was, as compared with 
 Hume, a graver, deeper, and so to speak, a more consecutive, 
 more comprehensive spirit. Graces there were indeed, or even, 
 it may be, subtleties, in which Hume had the advantage perhaps. 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 19 
 
 He is still in England an unsurpassed master of expression 
 this, certainly, in his History, if in his Essays he somewhat 
 baffles his own self by a certain laboured breadth of conscious 
 fine writing, often singularly inexact and infelicitous. Still 
 Kant, with reference to his products, must be allowed much the 
 greater importance. In the history of philosophy he will pro- 
 bably always command as influential a place in the modern 
 world as Socrates in the ancient ; while, as probably, Hume will 
 occupy at best some such position as that of Heraclitus or Pro- 
 tagoras. Hume, nevertheless, if unequal to Kant, must, in view 
 at once of his own subjective ability and his enormous influence, 
 be pronounced one of the most important of writers. It would 
 be difficult to rate too high the value of his French predecessors 
 and contemporaries as regards purification of their oppressed 
 and corrupt country ; and Hume must be allowed, though with 
 less call, to have subserved some such function in the land we 
 live in. In preferring Kant, indeed, I must be acquitted of any 
 undue partiality ; for all that appertains to personal bias was 
 naturally, and by reason of early and numerous associations, on 
 the side of my countryman. 
 
 Demurring, then, to Mr Huxley's opinion on this matter, and 
 postponing remark on the doctrines to which he alludes, I must 
 express a hearty concurrence with every word he utters on 
 Comte. In him I too " find little or nothing of any scientific 
 value." I too have been lost in the mere mirage and sands of 
 " those dreary and verbose pages ; " and I acknowledge in Mr 
 Huxley's every word the ring of a genuine experience. M. 
 Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical and scientific 
 proficiency, as well as of quick but biassed intelligence. A 
 member of the Aufkldrung, he had seen the immense advance of 
 physical science since Newton, under, as is usually said, the 
 method of Bacon ; and, like Hume, like Reid, like Kant, who had 
 all anticipated him in this, he sought to transfer that method to 
 the domain of mind. In this he failed ; and though in a socio- 
 logical aspect he is not without true glances into the present 
 disintegration of society and the conditions of it, anything of 
 importance cannot be claimed for him. There is not a sentence 
 in his book that, in the hollow elaboration and windy preten- 
 tiousness of its build, is not an exact type of its own constructor. 
 On the whole, indeed, when we consider the little to which he 
 attained, the empty inflation of his claims, the monstrous and 
 maniacal self-conceit into which he was exalted, it may appear, 
 perhaps, that charity to M. Comte himself, to say nothing of 
 the world, should induce us to wish that both his name and his 
 works were buried in oblivion. Now, truly, that Mr Huxley 
 (the " call " being for the moment his) has so pronounced him- 
 self, especially as the facts of the case are exactly and absolutely 
 
20 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 what he indicates, perhaps we may expect this consummation 
 not to be so very long delayed. More than those members of 
 the revulsion already mentioned, one is apt to suspect, will be 
 anxious now to beat a retreat. Not that this, however, is so 
 certain to be allowed them ; for their estimate of M. Comte is a 
 valuable element in our estimate of them. 
 
 Frankness on the part of Mr Huxley is not limited to his 
 opinion of M. Comte ; it accompanies us throughout his whole 
 essay. He seems even to take pride, indeed, in naming always 
 and everywhere his object at the plainest. That object, 
 in a general point of view, relates, he tells us, solely to 
 materialism, but with a double issue. While it is his declared 
 purpose, in the first place, namely, to lead us into materialism, 
 it is equally his declared purpose, in the second place, to lead 
 us out of materialism. On the first issue, for example, he directly 
 warns his audience that to accept the conclusions which he 
 conceives himself to have established on protoplasm, is to accept 
 these also : That " all vital action " is but " the result of the 
 molecular forces " of the physical basis ; and that, by conse- 
 quence, to use his own words to his audience, " the thoughts to 
 which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding 
 them are but the expression of molecular changes in that 
 matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena." 
 And, so far, I think, we shall not disagree with Mr Huxley when 
 he says that " most undoubtedly the terms of his propositions 
 are distinctly materialistic." Still, on the second issue, Mr 
 Huxley asserts that he is " individually no materialist." " On 
 the contrary, he believes materialism to involve grave philoso- 
 phical error ; " and the " union of materialistic terminology 
 with the repudiation of materialistic philosophy " he con- 
 ceives himself to share " with some of the most thoughtful 
 men with whom he is acquainted." In short, to unite both 
 issues, we have it in Mr Huxley's own words, that it is the 
 single object of his essay " to explain how such a union is not 
 only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound logic ; " and 
 that, accordingly, he will, in the first place, " lead us through the 
 territory of vital phenomena to the materialistic slough," while 
 pointing out, in the second, " the sole path by which, in his judg- 
 ment, extrication is possible." Mr Huxley's essay, then, falls 
 evidently into two parts ; and of these two parts we may say, 
 further, that while the one that in which he leads us into 
 materialism will be predominatingly physiological, the other 
 or that in which he leads us out of materialism will be predo- 
 minatingly philosophical. Two corresponding parts would thus 
 seem to be prescribed to any full discussion of the essay ; and 
 of these, in the present needs of the world, it is evidently the 
 latter that has the more promising theme. The truth is, how- 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 21 
 
 ever, that Mr Huxley, after having exerted all his strength in 
 his first part to throw us into " the materialistic slough," by 
 clear necessity of knowledge, only calls to us, in his second part, 
 cheerily, as it were, to come out of this slough again, on the some- 
 what obscure necessity of ignorance. This, then, is but a lop-sided 
 balance, where a scale in the air only seems to struggle vainly 
 to raise its well-weighted fellow on the ground. Mr Huxley, in 
 fact, possesses no remedy for materialism but what lies in the 
 expression that, while he knows not what matter is in itself, he 
 certainly knows that causality is but contingent succession; 
 and thus, like the so-called " philosophy " of the Revulsion, Mr 
 Huxley would only mock us into the intensest dogmatism on 
 the one side by a fallacious reference to the intensest scepticism 
 on the other. 
 
 The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr Huxley's 
 argument for materialism, but say what is required, at the same 
 time, on his alleged argument which is merely the imaginary, 
 or imaginative, impregnation of ignorance against it* 
 
 Following Mr Huxley's own steps in his essay, the course of 
 his positions will be found to run, in summary, thus : 
 
 What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that there is 
 one kind of matter common to all living beings, and it is named 
 protoplasm. No doubt it may appear at first sight that, in the 
 various kinds of living beings, we have only difference before us, 
 as in the lichen on the rock and the painter that paints it, the 
 microscopic animalcule or fungus and the Finner whale or 
 Indian fig the flower in the hair of a girl and the blood in her 
 veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and all other diver- 
 sities, there really exists a threefold unity : a unity of faculty, a 
 unity of form, and a unity of substance. 
 
 On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty, power, 
 the action exhibited, there are but three categories of human 
 activity contractility, alimentation, and reproduction ; and 
 there are no fewer for the lower forms of life, whether animal 
 or vegetable. In the nettle, for instance, we find the woody- 
 case of its sting lined by a granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is 
 possessed of contractility. But in this respect that is, in the 
 possession of contractile substance other plants are as the 
 nettle, and all animals are as plants. Protoplasm for the 
 nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm is common to the whole 
 of them. The difference, in short, between the powers of the 
 
 * Mr Huxley's own extraordinary charge of " utter misrepresentation " in the 
 above reference, has necessitated (in this edition) the present Part IL, in express 
 consideration of what Mr Huxley says " against " materialism. This essay is 
 thus now quite too large, as compared with the one that gave rise to it if quite 
 too small on the other hand, for the matter (especially philosophical), it attempts 
 in the end to discuss a matter which has interest, perhaps, beyond Mr Huxley'a 
 reference. 
 
22 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 lowest plant or animal and those of the highest is one only of 
 - degree and not of kind. 
 
 But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form, or 
 external appearance and manifested structure. Not the sting 
 only, but the whole nettle, is made up of protoplasm ; and of all 
 the other vegetables the nettle is but a type. Nor are animals 
 different. The colourless blood-corpuscles in man and the 
 rest are identical with the protoplasm of the nettle ; and both 
 he and they consisted at first only of an aggregation of such. 
 Protoplasm is the common constituent the common origin. 
 At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all that 
 lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified or unmodified, 
 protoplasm. 
 
 But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of substance, 
 to internal composition, chemistry establishes this also. All 
 forms of protoplasm, that is, consist alike of carbon, hydrogen, 
 oxygen, and nitrogen, and behave similarly under similar 
 reagents. 
 
 So, now, a uniform character having in this threefold manner 
 been proved for protoplasm, what is its origin, and what is its 
 fate ? Of these the latter is not far to seek. The fate of pro- 
 toplasm is death death into its chemical constituents ; and 
 this determines its origin also. Protoplasm can originate only 
 in that into which it dies, the elements the carbon, hydrogen, 
 oxygen, and nitrogen of which it was found to consist. 
 Hydrogen, with oxygen, forms water ; carbon, with oxygen, 
 carbonic acid; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia. Similarly, 
 water, carbonic acid, and ammonia form, in union, protoplasm. 
 The influence of pre-existing protoplasm only determines com- 
 bination in its case, as that of the electric spark determines 
 combination in the case of water. Protoplasm, then, is but an 
 aggregate of physical materials, exhibiting in combination 
 only as was to be expected new properties. The properties 
 of water are not more different from those of hydrogen and 
 oxygen than the properties of protoplasm are different from 
 those of water, carbonic acid, and ammonia. We have the same 
 warrant to attribute the consequences to the premises in the 
 one case as in the other. If, on the first stage of combination, 
 represented by that of water, simples could unite into something 
 so different from themselves, why, on the second stage of com- 
 bination, represented by that of protoplasm, should not compounds 
 similarly unite into something equally different from themselves ? 
 If the constituents are credited with the properties there, why 
 refuse to credit the constituents with the properties here ? To 
 the constituents of protoplasm, in truth, any new element, 
 named vitality, has no more been added, than to the constituents 
 of water any new element, named aquosity. Nor is there any 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 23 
 
 logical halting-place between this conclusion and the further 
 and final one: That all vital action whatever, intellectual 
 included, is but the result of the molecular forces of the pro- 
 toplasm which displays it. 
 
 These sentences will be acknowledged, I think, at least fairly 
 to represent Mr Huxley's relative deliverances, and, conse- 
 quently, as I may be allowed to explain again, the only 
 important while much the larger part of the whole essay. 
 Mr Huxley, that is, while devoting fifty paragraphs to our 
 physiological immersion in the "materialistic slough," grants 
 but one-and-twenty towards our philosophical escape from it ; 
 the fifty besides being, so to speak, in reality the wind, and the 
 one-and-twenty only the whistle for it. What these latter say, in 
 effect, is no more than this, that matter being known not in itself 
 but only in its qualities, and cause and effect not in their nexus, but 
 only in their sequence, matter may be spirit or spirit matter, cause 
 effect or effect cause in short, for aught that Mr Huxley more 
 than phenomenally knows, this may be that or that this, first 
 second, or second first, but the conclusion shall be this, that he 
 will lay out all our knowledge materially, and we may lay out all 
 our ignorance immaterially if we will. Which reasoning and 
 conclusion, I may merely remark, come precisely to this : That 
 Mr Huxley who, hoping yet to see each object (a pin, say) not 
 in its qualities but in itself, still, consistently antithetic, cannot 
 believe in the extinction of fire by water or of life by the rope, 
 for any reason or for any necessity that lies in the nature of the 
 case, but simply for the habit of the thing has not yet put 
 himself at home with the metaphysical categories of substance 
 and causality ; thanks, perhaps, to those guides of his whom we, 
 the amusing Britons that we are, bravely proclaim " the foremost 
 thinkers of the day !"* 
 
 The matter and manner of the whole essay are now fairly 
 before us, and I think that, with the approbation of the reader, 
 its procedure, generally, may be described as an attempt to 
 establish, not by any complete and systematic induction, but by 
 a variety of partial and illustrative assertions, two propositions. 
 Of these propositions the first is, That all animal and vegetable 
 organisms are essentially alike in power, in form, and in sub- 
 stance ; and the second, That all vital and intellectual functions 
 are the properties of the molecular disposition and changes of 
 the material basis (protoplasm) of which the various animals 
 and vegetables consist. In both propositions, the agent of 
 proof is this same alleged material basis of life, or protoplasm. 
 For the first proposition, all animal and vegetable organisms 
 shall be identified in protoplasm ; and for the second, a simple 
 
 * See note page 21. 
 
24 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 chemical analogy shall assign intellect and vitality to the 
 molecular constituents of the protoplasm, in connection with 
 which they are at least exhibited, 
 
 In order, then, to obtain a footing on the ground offered 
 us, the first question we naturally put is, What is Protoplasm ? 
 And an answer to this question can be obtained only by a 
 reference to the historical progress of the physiological cell 
 theory. 
 
 That theoiy may be said to have wholly grown up since John 
 Hunter wrote his celebrated work On the Nature of the Blood, 
 etc. New growths to Hunter depended on an exudation of the 
 plasma of the blood, in which, by virtue of its own plasticity, 
 vessels formed, and conditioned the further progress. The 
 influence of these ideas seems to have still acted, even after a 
 conception of the cell was arrived at. For starting element, 
 Schleiden required an intracellular plasma, and Schwann a 
 structureless exudation, in which minute granules, if not indeed 
 already pre-existent, formed, and by aggregation grew into 
 nuclei, round which singly the production of a membrane at 
 length enclosed a cell. It was then that, in this connection, we 
 heard of the terms blastema and cyto-blastema. The theory of 
 the vegetable cell was completed earlier than that of the animal 
 one. Completion of this latter, again, seems to have been first 
 effected by Schwann, after Muller had insisted on the analogy 
 between animal and vegetable tissue, and Valentin had demon- 
 strated a nucleus in the animal cell, as previously Brown in the 
 vegetable one. But assuming Schwann's labour, and what 
 surrounded it, to have been a first stage, the wonderful ability 
 of Virchow may be said to have raised the theory of the cell 
 fully to a second stage. Now, of this second stage, it is the 
 dissolution or resolution that has led to the emergence of the 
 word Protoplasm. 
 
 The body, to Virchow, constituted a free state of individual 
 subjects, with equal rights but unequal capacities. These were 
 the cells, which consisted each of an enclosing membrane, and 
 an enclosed nucleus with surrounding intracellular matrix or 
 matter. These cells, further, propagated themselves, chiefly by 
 partition or division; and the fundamental principle of the whole 
 theory was expressed in the dictum, " Omnis cellula e cellula" 
 That is, the nucleus, becoming gradually elongated, at last 
 parted in the midst ; and each half, acting as centre of attrac- 
 tion to the surrounding intracellular matrix or contained matter, 
 stood forth as a new nucleus to a new cell, formed by division 
 at length of the original cell. 
 
 The first step taken in resolution of this theory was completed 
 by Max Schultze, preceded by Ley dig. This was the elimina- 
 tion, on the whole, of an investing membrane. Such membrane 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 25 
 
 may, and does, ultimately form ; but in the first instance, for 
 the most part, it appears, the cell is naked. The second step 
 in the resolution belongs perhaps to Briicke, though preceded 
 by Bergmann, and though Max Schultze, Kiihne, Haeckel, 
 and others ought to be mentioned in the same connection. 
 This step was the elimination, or at least subordination, of 
 the nucleus. The nucleus, we are to understand now, is 
 necessary, it may be, neither to the division nor to the exist- 
 ence of the cell. 
 
 Thus, then, stripped of its membrane, relieved of its 
 nucleus, what now remains for the cell ? Why, nothing but 
 what was the contained matter, the intracellular matrix, 
 and is Protoplasm. 
 
 In the application of this word itself, however, to the element 
 in question, there are also a step or two to be noticed. The 
 first step was Dujardin's discovery of sarcode; and the second the 
 introduction (by Mohl) of the term protoplasm as the name for the 
 layer of the vegetable cell that lined the cellulose, and enclosed the 
 nucleus. Sarcode, found in certain of the lower forms of life, was 
 a simple substance that exhibited powers of spontaneous contrac- 
 tion and movement. Thus, processes of such simple, soft, con- 
 tractile matter are protuded by the rhizopods, and locomotion by 
 their means effected. Remak first extended the use of the term 
 protoplasm from the layer which bore that name in the vegetable 
 cell to the analogous element in the animal cell; but it was Max 
 Schultze, in particular, who, by applying the name to the intra- 
 cellular matrix, or contained matter, when divested of mem- 
 brane, and by identifying this substance itself with sarcode, 
 first fairly established protoplasm, name and thing, in its pre- 
 sent prominence. 
 
 In this account I have necessarily omitted many subordinate 
 and intervening steps in the successive establishment, appar- 
 ently, of the contractility, superior importance^ and complete isola- 
 tion of this thing to which, under the name of protoplasm, Mr 
 Huxley of late has called such vast attention, Besides the 
 names mentioned, there are others of great eminence in this 
 connection, such as Meyen, Siebold, Reichert, Ecker, Henle, and 
 Kolliker among the Germans ; and among ourselves, Beale and 
 Huxley himself. John Goodsir will be mentioned again. 
 
 We have now, perhaps, obtained a general idea of protoplasm. 
 Briicke, when he talks of it as " living cell-body or elementary 
 organism," comes very near the leading idea of Mr Huxley as 
 expressed in his phrase, " the physiological basis, or matter, of 
 life." Living cell-body, elementary organism, primitive living 
 matter that, evidently, is the quest of Mr Huxley. There is 
 aqueous matter, he would say, perhaps, composed of hydrogen 
 and oxygen, and it is the same thing whether in the rain-drop 
 
26 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 or the ocean ; so, similarly, there is vital matter, which, com- 
 posed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, is the same 
 thing whether in cryptogams or in elephants, in animalcules or 
 in men. What, in fact, Mr Huxley seeks, probably, is living 
 protein protein, so to speak, struck into life. Just such appears 
 to him to be the nature of protoplasm, and in it he believes 
 himself to possess at last a living clay wherewith to build the 
 whole organic world. 
 
 The question, What is Protoplasm 1 is answered, then ; but, 
 for the understanding of what is to follow, there is still one 
 general consideration to be premised. 
 
 Mr Huxley's conception of protoplasm, as we have seen, is 
 that of living matter, living protein ; what we may call, per- 
 haps, elementary life-stuff. Now, is it quite certain that Mr 
 Huxley is correct in this conception ? Are we to understand, 
 for example, that cells have now definitively vanished, and left 
 in their place only a uniform and universal matter of quite in- 
 definite proportions ? No ; such an understanding would be 
 quite wrong. Whatever may be the opinion of the adherents 
 of the molecular theory of generation (namely, that physical 
 molecules combine of themselves into living organisms), it is 
 certain that all the great German histologists still hold by the 
 cell, and can hardly open their mouths without mention of it. 
 I do not allude here to any special adherents of either nucleus 
 or membrane, but to the most advanced innovators in both 
 respects ; to such men as Schultze and Briicke and Kulme. 
 These, as we have seen, pretty well confine their attention, like 
 Mr Huxley, to the protoplasm. But they do not the less on that 
 account talk of the cell. For them, it is only in cells that pro- 
 toplasm exists. To their view, we cannot fancy protoplasm as 
 so much matter in a pot, in an ointment-box, any portion of 
 which scooped out in an ear-picker would be so much life-stuff, 
 and, though a part, quite as good as the whole. This seems to 
 be Mr Huxley's conception, but it is not theirs. A certain 
 measure goes with protoplasm to constitute it an organism to 
 them, and worthy of their attention. They refuse to give con- 
 sideration to any mere protoplasm-shred that may not have yet 
 ceased, perhaps, to exhibit all sign of contractility under the 
 microscope, and demand a protoplasm-ce^. In short, proto- 
 plasm is to them still distributed in cells, and only that measure 
 of protoplasm is cell that is adequate to the whole group of 
 vital manifestations. Briicke, for example, of all innovators 
 probably the most innovating, and denying, or inclined to deny, 
 both nucleus and membrane, does not hesitate, according to 
 Strieker, to speak still of cells as self-complete organisms, that 
 move and grow, that nourish and reproduce themselves, and 
 that perform specific function. " Omnis cellula e cellula," is the 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 27 
 
 rubric they work under as much now as ever. The heart of a 
 turtle, they say, is not a turtle; so neither is a protoplasm-shred 
 a protoplasm-cell. 
 
 This, then, is the general consideration which I think it neces- 
 sary to premise ; and it seems, almost of itself, to negate Mr 
 Huxley's reasonings in advance, for it warrants us in denying 
 that physiological clay of which all living things are but bricks 
 baked, Mr Huxley intimates, and in establishing in its place 
 cells as before living cells that differ infinitely the one from 
 the other, and so differ from the very first moment of their 
 existence. This consideration shall not be allowed to pre- 
 termit, however, an examination of Mr Huxley's own proofs, 
 which will only the more and more avail to indicate the difference 
 suggested. 
 
 These proofs, as has been said, would, by means of the single 
 fulcrum of protoplasm, establish first, the identity, and second, 
 the materiality of all life, whether vegetable or animal. These 
 are, shortly, the two propositions which we have already seen, 
 and to which, in their order, we now pass. 
 
 All organisms then, whether animal or vegetable, have been 
 understood for some time back to originate in and consist of 
 cells ; but the progress of physiology has seemed now to sub- 
 stitute for cells a single matter of fife, protoplasm; and it is 
 here that Mr Huxley, rather too precipitately, perhaps, sees his 
 cue. Mr Huxley's very first word is the " physical basis or 
 matter of life ; " and he supposes (in his advanced knowledge), 
 " that to many the idea that there is such a thing may be novel." 
 This then, so far, is, though a misunderstanding, what is new in 
 Mr Huxley's contribution. He seems to have said to himself, 
 if formerly the whole world was thought kin in an "ideal" or 
 formal element, organisation, I shall now, by (supposed) aid of 
 the Germans, finally complete this identification in a " physical " 
 or material element, protoplasm. In short, what at this stage 
 we are asked to witness in the essay is, the identification of all 
 living beings whatever in the identity of protoplasm. As there 
 is a single matter, clay, which is the matter of all bricks, so there 
 is a single matter, protoplasm, which is the matter of all organ- 
 isms. " Protoplasm is the clay of the potter, which, bake it 
 and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and 
 not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod." 
 Now here I cannot help stopping a moment to remark that Mr 
 Huxley puts emphatically his whole soul into this sentence, and 
 evidently believes it to be, if we may use the word, a clincher. 
 But, after all, does it say much ? or rather, does it say anything ? 
 To the question, " Of what are you made 1 " the answer, for a 
 long time now, and by the great mass of human beings who are 
 supposed civilised, has been " Dust." Dust, and the same dust, 
 
28 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 lias been allowed to constitute us all. But materialism has not 
 on that account been the irresistible result. Attention hitherto 
 and surely excusably, or even laudably in such a case has 
 been given not so much to the dust as to the " potter," and the 
 " artifice " by which he could so transform, or, as Mr Huxley 
 will have it, modify it. To ask us to say clay, or even proto- 
 plasm, instead of dust, is not to ask us for "much, then, seeing that 
 even to Mr Huxley there still remain both the " potter " and his 
 " artifice." 
 
 But to return : To Mr Huxley, when he says all bricks, being 
 made of clay, are the same thing, we answer, Yes, undoubtedly, 
 if they are made of the same clay. That is, the bricks are 
 identical if the clay is identical ; but, on the other hand, by as 
 much as the clay differs will the bricks differ. And, similarly, 
 all organisms can be identified only if their composing proto- 
 plasm can be identified. To this stake is the argument of Mr 
 Huxley tied. 
 
 This argument itself takes, as we have seen, a threefold 
 course : Mr Huxley will prove his position in this place by 
 reference, firstly, to unity of faculty; secondly, to unity of 
 form ; and thirdly, to unity of substance. It is this course of 
 proof, then, which we have now to follow, but taking the 
 question of substance, as simplest, first, and the others later. 
 
 By substance, Mr Huxley understands the internal or chemi- 
 cal composition ; and, with a mere reference to the action of 
 reagents, he asserts the protoplasm of all living beings to be an 
 identical combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitro- 
 gen. It is for us to ask, then, Are all samples of protoplasm 
 identical first, in their chemical composition, and, second, under 
 the action of the various reagents ? 
 
 On the first clause, we may say, in the first place, towards a 
 proof of difference which will only cumulate, I hope, that, even 
 should we grant in all protoplasm an identity of chemical in- 
 gredients, what is called Allotropy may still have introduced 
 no inconsiderable variety. Ozone is not antozone, nor is oxy- 
 gen either, though in chemical constitution all are alike. In 
 the second place, again, we may say that, with varying pro- 
 portions, the same component parts produce very various results. 
 By way of illustration, it will suffice to refer to such different 
 things as the proteids, gluten, albumen, fibrin, gelatine, &c., 
 compared with the urinary products, urea and uric acid ; or with 
 the biliary products, glycocol, glycocholic acid, bili-rubin, bili- 
 verdin, &c. ; and yet all these substances, varying so much the 
 one from the other, are, as protoplasm is, compounds of carbon, 
 hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. But, in the third place, we 
 are not limited to a may say ; we can assert the fact that all 
 protoplasm is not chemically identical. All the tissues of the 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 29 
 
 organism are called protoplasm by Mr Huxley ; but can we pre- 
 dicate chemical identity of muscle and bone, for example V In 
 such cases Mr Huxley, it is true, may bring the word " modified " 
 into use ; but the objection of modification we shall examine 
 later. In the meantime, we are justified, by Mr Huxley's very 
 argument, in regarding all organised tissues whatever as proto- 
 plasm; for if these tissues are not to be identified in protoplasm, 
 we must suppose denied what it was his one business to affirm. 
 And it is against that affirmation that we point to the fact of 
 much chemical difference obtaining among the tissues, not only 
 in the proportions of their fundamental elements, but also in the 
 addition (and proportions as well) of such others as chlorine, 
 sulphur, phosphorus, potass, soda, lime, magnesia, iron, etc. 
 Vast differences vitally must be legitimately assumed for tissues 
 that are so different chemically. But, in the fourth place, we 
 have the authority of the Germans for asserting that the cells 
 themselves and they now, to the most advanced, are only 
 protoplasm do differ chemically, some being found to contain 
 glycogen, some cholesterine, some protagon, and some myosin. 
 Now such substances, let the chemical analogy be what it may, 
 must still be allowed to introduce chemical difference. In the 
 last place, Mr Huxley's analysis is an analysis of dead proto- 
 plasm, and indecisive, consequently, for that which lives. Mr 
 Huxley betrays sensitiveness in advance to this objection ; for 
 he seeks to rise above both sensitiveness and objection at once 
 by styling the latter " frivolous." Nevertheless the Germans 
 say pointedly that it is unknown whether the same elements 
 are to be referred to the cells after as before death. Kiihne 
 does not consider it proved that living muscle contains syntonin ; 
 yet Mr Huxley tells us, in his Physiology, that " syntonin is the 
 chief constituent of muscle and flesh/' In general, we may say, 
 according to Strieker, that all weight is put now on the examin- 
 ation of living tissue, and that the difference is fully allowed 
 between that and dead tissue. 
 
 On the second clause now, or with regard to the action of 
 reagents, these must be denied to produce the like result on the 
 various forms of protoplasm. With reference to temperature, 
 for example, Kiihne reports the movements of the amoeba to be 
 arrested in iced water ; while, in the same medium, the ova of 
 the trout furrow famously, but perish even in a warmed room. 
 Others, again, we are told, may be actually dried, and yet live. 
 Of ova in general, in this connection, it is said that they live or 
 die according as the temperature to which they are exposed 
 differs little or much from that which is natural to the organ- 
 isms producing them. In some, according to Max Schultze, 
 even distilled water is enough to arrest movement. Now, not 
 to dwell longer here, both amoeba and ova are to Mr Huxley 
 
30 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 pure protoplasm; and such difference of result, according to 
 difference of temperature, etc., must assuredly be allowed to 
 point to a difference of original nature. Any conclusion so far, 
 then, in regard to unity of substance, whether the chemical 
 composition or the action of reagents be considered, cannot be 
 said to bear out the views of Mr Huxley. 
 
 What now of the unities of form and power in protoplasm ? 
 By form, Mr Huxley will be found to mean the general appear- 
 ance and structure ; and by faculty or power, the action 
 exhibited. Now it will be very easy to prove that, in neither 
 respect, do all specimens of protoplasm agree. Mr Huxley's 
 representative protoplasm, it appears, is that of the nettle-sting ; 
 and he describes it as a granulated, semi-fluid body, contractile 
 in mass, and contractile also in detail to the development of a 
 species of circulation. Strieker, again, speaks of it as a homo- 
 geneous substance, in which any granules that may appear 
 must be considered of foreign importation, and in which there 
 are no evidences of circulation. In this last respect, then, that 
 Mr Huxley should talk of " tiny Maelstroms," such as even in 
 the silence of a tropical noon might stun us, if heard, as " with 
 the roar of a great city," may be viewed, perhaps, as a rise into 
 poetry beyond the occasion. 
 
 Further, according to Strieker, protoplasm varies almost in- 
 finitely in consistence, in shape, in structure, and in function. 
 In consistence, it is sometimes so fluid as to be capable of form- 
 ing in drops; sometimes semi-fluid and gelatinous; sometimes 
 of considerable resistance. In shape for to Strieker the cells 
 are now protoplasm we have club-shaped protoplasm, globe- 
 shaped protoplasm, cup-shaped protoplasm, bottle-shaped pro- 
 toplasm spindle-shaped protoplasm branched, threaded, 
 ciliated protoplasm circle-headed protoplasm flat, conical, 
 cylindrical, longitudinal, prismatic, polyhedral, and palisade-like 
 protoplasm. In structure, again, it is sometimes uniform and 
 sometimes reticulated into interspaces that contain fluid. In 
 function, lastly and here we have entered on the consideration 
 of faculty or power some protoplasm is vagrant (so to trans- 
 late wandernd), and of unknown use, like- the colourless blood- 
 corpuscles. 
 
 (In reference to these, as strengthening the argument, and 
 throwing much light generally, I break off a moment to say that, 
 very interesting as they are in themselves, and as Recklinghausen, 
 in especial, has made them, Mr Huxley's theory of them dis- 
 agrees considerably with the prevalent German one. He speaks 
 of them as the source of the body in general, yet, in his Physi- 
 ology, he talks of the spleen, the lymphatics, and even the liver 
 parts of the body as their source. They are so few in 
 number that, while Mr Huxley is thankful to be able to point 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 31 
 
 to the inside of the lips as a seat for them, they bear to the red 
 corpuscles only the proportion of 1 to 450. This disproportion, 
 however, is no bar to Mr Huxley's derivation of the latter from 
 the former. But the fact is questioned. The Germans, gener- 
 ally, for their part, describe the colourless, or vagrant, blood- 
 corpuscles as probably media of conjugation or reparation, but 
 acknowledge their function to be as yet quite unknown ; while 
 Rindfleisch, characterising the spleen as the grave of the red, 
 and the womb of the white, corpuscles, evidently refers the 
 latter to the former. This, indeed, is a matter of direct asser- 
 tion with Preyer, who has " shown that pieces of red blood- 
 corpuscles may be eaten by the amoeboid cells of the frog," and 
 holds that the latter (the white corpuscles) proceed directly from 
 the former (the red corpuscles) ; so that it seems to be deter- 
 mined in the meantime that there is no proof of the reverse 
 being the fact). 
 
 In function, then, to resume, some protoplasm is vagrant, 
 and of unknown use. Some again produces pepsine, and some 
 fat. Some at least contains pigment. Then there is nerve- 
 protoplasm, brain-protoplasm, bone-protoplasm, muscle-proto- 
 plasm, and protoplasm of all the other tissues, no one of which 
 but produces only its own kind, and is uninterchangeable with 
 the rest. Lastly, on this head, we have to point to the over- 
 whelming fact that there is the infinitely different protoplasm 
 of the various infinitely different plants and animals, in each of 
 which its own protoplasm, as in the case of that of the various 
 tissues, but produces its own kind, and is uninterchangeable 
 with that of the rest. 
 
 It may be objected, indeed, that these latter are examples of 
 modified protoplasm. The objection of modification, as said, we 
 have to see by itself later ; but, in the meantime, it may be 
 asked, Where are we to begin, not to have modified protoplasm? 
 We have the example of Mr Huxley himself, who, 'in the nettle- 
 sting, begins already with modified protoplasm ; and we have 
 the authority of Rindfleisch for asserting that " in every differ- 
 ent tissue we must look for a different initial term of the 
 productive series." This, evidently, is a very strong light on 
 the original multiplicity of protoplasm, which the consideration, 
 as we have seen, of the various plants and animals, has made, 
 further, infinite. This is enough ; but there is no wish to evade 
 beginning with the very beginning with absolutely pure 
 initial protoplasm, if it can but be given us in any reference. 
 The simple egg that, probably, is the beginning that, pro- 
 bably, is the original identity ; yet even there we find already 
 distribution of the identity into infinite difference. This, certainly, 
 with reference to the various organisms, but with reference also 
 to the various tissues. That we regard the egg as the begin- 
 
32 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 ning, and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional phy- 
 siological school, with molecules themselves, and the assump- 
 tion of their spontaneous combination into organised life, depends 
 on this, that the great Germans so often alluded to, Kiihne 
 among them, still trust in the experiments of Pasteur; and 
 while they do not deny the possibility, or even the fact, of 
 molecular generation, still feel justified in denying the existence 
 of any observation that yet unassailably attests a generatio 
 osquivoca (the production of life without preceding life). By 
 such authority as this the simple philosophical spectator has no 
 choice but to take his stand ; and therefore it is that I assume 
 the egg as the established beginning, so far, of all vegetable 
 and animal organisms. To the egg, too, as the beginning, Mr 
 Huxley, though the lining of the nettle-sting is his representa- 
 tive protoplasm, at least refers. " In the earliest condition of 
 the human organism," he says, in allusion to the white (vagrant) 
 corpuscles of the blood, " in that state in which it has but just 
 become distinguished from the egg in which it arises, it is 
 nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every 
 organ of the body was once no more than such an aggregation." 
 Now, in beginning with the egg an absolute beginning being 
 denied us in consequence of the pre-existent infinite difference 
 of the egg or eggs themselves we may gather from the 
 German physiologists some such account of the actual facts 
 as this. 
 
 The first change signalised in the impregnated egg seems 
 that of Furchung, or furrowing what the Germans call the 
 Furcliungskugeln, the Dotterkugeln, form. Then these Kugeln 
 clumps, eminences, mon tides, we may translate the word break 
 into cells ; and these are the cells of the embryo. Mr Huxley, 
 as quoted, refers to the whole body, and every organ of the 
 body, as at first but an aggregation of colourless blood-corpus- 
 cles; but in the very statement which would render the identity 
 alone explicit, the difference is quite as plainly implicit. As 
 much as this lies in the word " organs," to say nothing of 
 " human." The cells of the " organs," to which he refers, are 
 even then uninterchangeable, and produce but themselves. 
 The Germans tell us of the Keimblatt, the germ-leaf, in 
 which all these organs originate. This Blatt, or leaf, is 
 threefold, it seems ; but even these folds are not indifferent. 
 The various cells have their distinct places in them from the 
 first. While what in this connection are called the epithelial 
 and endothelial tissues spring respectively from the upper and 
 under leaf, connective tissues, with muscle and blood, spring 
 from the middle one. Surely in such facts we have a perfect 
 warrant to assert the initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to 
 insist on this, that, from the very earliest moment even 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 33 
 
 literally ab ovo brain-cells only generate brain-cells, bone-cells, 
 bone-cells, and so on. 
 
 These considerations on function all concern faculty or power; 
 but we have to notice now that the characteristic and funda- 
 mental form of power is to Mr Huxley contractility. He even 
 quotes Goethe in proof of contractility being the main power or 
 faculty of Man! Nevertheless it is to be said at once that, 
 while there are differences hi what protoplasm is contractile, all 
 protoplasm is not contractile, nor dependent on contractility for 
 its functions. In the former respect, for example, muscle, while 
 it is the contractile tissue special, is also to Mr Huxley proto- 
 plasm ; yet Strieker asserts the inner construction of the con- 
 tractile substance, of which muscle-fibre virtually consists, to be 
 essentially different from contractile protoplasm. Here, then, 
 we have the contractile substance proper " essentially different " 
 from the contractile source proper. In the latter respect, again, 
 we shall not call in the tmcontractile substances which Mr 
 Huxley himself denominates protoplasm bread, namely, roast 
 mutton, and boiled lobster ; but we may ask where even in 
 the case of a living body is the contractility of white of egg ? 
 In this reference, too, we may remark that Ktihne, who divides 
 the protoplasm of the epidermis into three classes, has been 
 unable to distinguish contractility in his own third class. Lastly, 
 where, in relation to the protoplasm of the nervous system, is 
 there evidence of its contractility ? Has any .one pretended 
 that thought is but the contraction of the brain ; or is it by con- 
 traction that the very nerves operate contraction the nerves 
 that supply muscles, namely ? Mr Huxley himself, in his Physi- 
 ology, describes nervous action very differently. There con- 
 duction is spoken of without a hint of contraction. Of the 
 higher faculties of man I have to speak again ; but let us just 
 ask where, in the case of any pure sensation smell, taste, touch, 
 sound, colour is there proof of any contraction? Are we 
 to suppose that between the physical cause of heat without 
 and the mental sensation of heat within, contraction is any- 
 where interpolated ? Generally, in conclusion here, while re- 
 minding of Virchow's testimony to the inherent inequalities of 
 cell-capacity, let us but, on the question of faculty, contrast 
 the kidney and the brain, even as these organs are viewed by 
 Mr Huxley. To him the one is but a sieve for the extrusion of 
 refuse : the other thinks Newton's ' Principia ' and Iliads of 
 Homer. 
 
 Probably, then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of 
 power, of form, or of substance, we have seen lacunce enow. 
 Nay, Mr Huxley himself can be adduced in evidence on the 
 same side. Not rarely do we find in his essay admissions of 
 probability where it is certainty that is alone in place. He says. 
 
34 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 for example, " It is more than probable that when the vegetable 
 world is thoroughly explored we shall find all plants in posses- 
 sion of the same powers." When a conclusion is decidedly 
 announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as here, that 
 the premises are still to collect. " So far" he says again, " as 
 the conditions of the manifestations of the phenomena of con- 
 tractility have yet, been studied." Now, such a so far need not 
 be very far; and we may confess in passing, that from Mr 
 Huxley the phrase, " the conditions of the manifestations of the 
 phenomena" grates. We hear again that it is " the rule rather 
 than the exception," or that "weighty authorities have suggested" 
 that such and such things " probably occur," or, while con- 
 templating the nettle-sting, that such "possible complexity" in 
 other cases " dawns upon one." On other occasions he expresses 
 himself to the effect that " perhaps it would not yet be safe to 
 say that all forms," etc. Nay, not only does he directly say that 
 "it is by no means his intention to suggest that there is no 
 difference between the lowest plant and the highest, or between 
 plants and animals." but he directly proves what he says, for 
 he demonstrates in plants and animals an essential difference of 
 power. Plants can assimilate inorganic matters, animals can not, 
 etc. Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his 
 own " basis " from beneath his own feet. After telling us that 
 all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 
 and nitrogen " in very complex union," he continues, " To this 
 complex combination, the nature of which has never been determined 
 with exactness, the name of protein has been applied." This, 
 plainly, is an identification, on Mr Huxley's own part, of proto- 
 plasm and protein; and what is said of the one being necessarily 
 true of the other, it follows that Mr Huxley admits the nature 
 of protoplasm never to have been determined with exactness, 
 and that, even in his eyes, the Us is still sub judice. This admis- 
 sion is strengthened by the words, too, " If we use this term " 
 (protein) " with such caution as may properly arise out of oiir 
 comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands ; " which 
 entitle us to demand, in consequence " of our comparative 
 ignorance of the things for which it stands," " caution " in the 
 use of the term protoplasm. In such a state of the case we 
 cannot wonder that Mr Huxley's own conclusion here is : There- 
 fore " all living matter is more or less albuminoid." All living 
 matter is more or less albuminoid ! That, indeed, is the single 
 conclusion of Mr Huxley's whole industry ; but it is a conclusion 
 that, far from requiring the intervention of protoplasm, had 
 been reached long before the word itself had been, in this con- 
 nection, used. 
 
 It is in this way, then, that Mr Huxley can be adduced in 
 refutation of himself; and I think his resort to an epigram of 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 35 
 
 Goethe's for reduction of the powers of man to those of contrac- 
 tion, digestion, and reproduction, can be regarded as an admis- 
 sion to the same effect. The epigram runs thus : 
 
 " Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit ? Es will sich ern^hren, 
 Kinder zeugen, und die naliren so gut es vermag. 
 Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stelT er sich wie er auch will." 
 
 That means, quite literally translated, " Why do the folks make 
 such a pother and stir ? They want to feed themselves, get 
 children, and then feed them as best they can ; no man does 
 more, let him do as he may." This, really, is Mr Huxley's sole 
 proof for his classification of the powers of man. Is it sufficient*? 
 Does it not apply rather to the birds of the air, the fish of the 
 sea, and the beasts of the field, than to man ? Did Newton 
 only feed himself, beget children, and then feed them 1 Was it 
 impossible for him to do any more, let him do as he might? 
 And what we ask of Newton we may ask of all the rest. To 
 elevate, therefore, the passing whim of mere literary Laune into 
 a cosmical axiom and a proof in place this we cannot help 
 adding to the other productions here in which Mr Huxley 
 appears against himself. 
 
 But were it impossible either for him or us to point to these 
 lacuna, it would still be our right and our duty to refer to the 
 present conditions of microscopic science in general as well as 
 in particular, and to demur to the erection of its dicta, constituted 
 as they yet are, into established columns and buttresses in 
 support of any theory of life, material or other. 
 
 The most delicate and dubious of all the sciences, it is also 
 the youngest. In its manipulations the slightest change may 
 operate as a destructive drought, or an equally destructive 
 deluge. Its very tools may positively create the structure it 
 actually examines. The present state of the science, and what 
 warrant it gives Mr Huxley to dogmatise on protoplasm, we 
 may understand from this avowal of Kiihne's : " To-day we 
 believe that we see " such or such fact, " but know not that 
 further improvements in the means of observation will not 
 reveal what is assumed for certainty to be only illusion; ' With 
 such authority to lean on and it is the highest we can have 
 we may be allowed to entertain the conjecture, that it is just 
 possible that some certainties, even of Mr Huxley, may yet 
 reveal themselves as illusions. 
 
 But, in resistance to any sweeping conclusions built on it, we 
 are not confined to a reference to the imperfections involved in 
 the very nature and epoch of the science itself in general. 
 With yet greater assurance of carrying conviction with us, .we 
 may point in particular to the actual opinions of its present pro- 
 fessors. We have seen already, in the consideration premised, 
 that Mr Huxley's hypothesis of a protoplasm matter is unsup- 
 
36 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 ported, even by the most innovating Germans, who as yet will 
 not advance, the most advanced of them, beyond a protoplasm- 
 cell ; and that his whole argument is thus sapped in advance. 
 But what threatens more absolute extinction of this argument 
 still, all the German physiologists do not accept even the proto* 
 plasm-cell. Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently published 
 " L ehrbuch der pathologischen Gewebelehre," speaks of the cell 
 very much as we understand Virchow to have spoken of it. 
 To him there is in the cell not only protoplasm but nucleus, and 
 perhaps membrane as well. To him, too, the cell propagates 
 itself quite as we have been hitherto fancying it to do, by 
 division of the nucleus, increase of the protoplasm, and ultimate 
 partition of the cell itself. Yet he knows withal of the opinions 
 of others, and accepts them in a manner. He mentions Kiihne's 
 account of the membrane as at first but a mere physical limit 
 of two fluids a mere peripheral film or curdling; still he 
 assumes a formal and decided membrane at last. Even L eydig 
 and Schultze, who shall be the express eliminators of the mem- 
 brane the one by initiation and the other by consummation 
 confess that, as regards the cells of certain tissues, they have 
 never been able to detect in them the absence of a membrane. 
 As regards the nucleus again, the case is very much stronger. 
 When we have admitted with Briicke that certain cryptogam 
 cells, with Haeckel that certain protists, with Cienkowsky that 
 two monads, and with Schultze that one amoeba, are without 
 nucleus when we have admitted that division of the cell may 
 take place without implicating that of the nucleus that the 
 movements of the nucleus may be passive and due to those of 
 the protoplasm that Baer and Strieker demonstrate the dis- 
 appearance of the original nucleus in the impregnated egg, 
 when we have admitted this, we have admitted also all that can 
 be said in degradation of the nucleus. Even those who say all 
 this, still attribute to the nucleus an important and unknown role, 
 and describe the formation in the impregnated egg of a new 
 nucleus ; while there are others again who resist every attempt 
 to degrade it. Bottcher asserts movement for the nucleus, even 
 when wholly removed from the cell ; Neumann points to such 
 movement in dead or dying cells ; and there is other testimony 
 to a like effect, as well as to peculiarities of the nucleus other- 
 wise that indicate spontaneity. In this reference, we may allude 
 to the weighty opinion of the late Professor Goodsir, who antici- 
 pated in so remarkable a manner certain of the determinations 
 of Virchow. Goodsir, in that anticipation, wonderfully rich and 
 ingenious as he is everywhere, is perhaps nowhere more interest- 
 ing and successful than in what concerns the nucleus. Of the 
 whole cell, the nucleus is to him, as it was to Schleiden, Schwann, 
 and others, the most important element. And this is the view to 
 
AS REGARDS PROTPOLASM, ETC. 37 
 
 which I, who have little business to speak, wish success. This 
 universe is not an accidental cavity, in which an accidental 
 dust has been accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental 
 evolution of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic 
 life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye 
 of reason as any diagram of mathematic. That majestic 
 spectacle could have been constructed, was constructed, only in 
 reason, for reason, and by reason. From beyond Orion and the 
 Pleiades, across the green hem of earth, up to the imperial per- 
 sonality of man, all, the furthest, the deadest, the dustiest, is 
 for fusion in the invisible point of the single Ego which alone 
 glorifies it. For the subject, and on the model of the subject, all 
 is made. Therefore it is that though precisely as there are 
 acephalous monsters by way of exception and deformity, there 
 may be also at the very extremity of animated existence cells 
 without a nucleus I cannot help believing that this nucleus 
 itself, as analogue of the subject, will yet be proved the most 
 important and indispensable of all the normal cell elements. 
 Even the phenomena of the impregnated egg seem to me to 
 support this view. In the egg, on impregnation, it seems to me 
 natural (I say it with a smile) that the old sun that ruled it 
 should go down, and that a new sun, stronger in the combina- 
 tion of the new and the old, should ascend into its place ! 
 
 Be these things as they may, we have now overwhelming 
 evidence before us for concluding, with reference to Mr 
 Huxley's first proposition, that in view of the nature of micro- 
 scopic science in view of the state of belief that obtains at 
 present as regards nucleus, membrane, and entire cell even in 
 view of the supporters of protoplasm itself Mr Huxley is not 
 authorised to speak of a physical matter of life ; which, for the 
 rest, if granted, would, for innumerable and, as it appears to 
 me, irrefragable reasons, be obliged to acknowledge for itself, 
 not identity, but an infinite diversity in power, in form, and in 
 substance. 
 
 So much for the first proposition in Mr Huxley's essay, or 
 that which concerns protoplasm, as a supposed matter of life, 
 identical itself, and involving the identity of all the various 
 organs and organisms which it is assumed to compose. What 
 now of the second proposition, or that which concerns the 
 materiality at once of protoplasm, and of all that is conceived 
 to derive from protoplasm? In other words, though, so to 
 speak, for organic bricks anything like an organic clay still 
 awaits the proof, I ask, if the bricks are not the same, because 
 the clay is not the same, what if the materiality of the former 
 is equally unsupported Jby the materiality of the latter ? Or 
 what if the functions of protoplasm are not the properties of its 
 mere molecular constitution ? 
 
3# AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 For this is Mr Huxley's second proposition, namely, That all 
 vital and intellectual functions are but the properties of the 
 molecular disposition and changes of the material basis (proto- 
 plasm) of which the various animals and vegetables consist. 
 With the conclusions now before us, it is evident that to enter 
 at all on this part of Mr Huxley's argumentation is, so far as we 
 are concerned, only a matter of grace. In order that it should 
 have any weight, we must grant the fact, at once of the exist- 
 ence of a matter of life, and of all organs and organisms being 
 but aggregates of it. This, obviously, we cannot now do. By 
 way of hypothesis, however, we may assume it. Let it be 
 granted, then, that pro hac vice there is a physical basis of life 
 with all the consequences named ; and now let us see how Mr 
 Huxley proceeds to establish its materiality. 
 
 The whole former part of Mr Huxley's essay consists (as said) 
 of fifty paragraphs, and the argument immediately concerned is 
 confined to the latter ten of them. This argument (see also 
 p. 22) is the simple chemical analogy that, under stimulus of an 
 electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen uniting into an equivalent 
 weight of water, and, under stimulus of pre-existing protoplasm, 
 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an equiva- 
 lent weight of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for attri- 
 buting the properties of the consequent to the properties of the 
 antecedents in the latter case as in the former. The properties 
 of protoplasm are, in origin and character, precisely on the same 
 level as the properties of water. The cases are perfectly parallel. 
 It is as absurd to attribute a new entity vitality to protoplasm, 
 as a new entity aquosity to water. Or, if it is by its mere 
 chemical and physical structure that water exhibits certain pro- 
 perties called aqueous, it is also by its mere chemical and 
 physical structure that protoplasm exhibits certain properties 
 called vital. All that is necessary in either case is, "under 
 certain conditions," to bring the chemical constituents to- 
 gether. If water is a molecular complication, protoplasm is 
 equally a molecular complication, and for the description of the 
 one or the other there is no change of language required. A 
 new substance with new qualities results in precisely the same 
 way here, as a new substance with new qualities there ; and the 
 derivative qualities are not more different from the primitive 
 qualities in the one instance, than the derivative qualities are 
 different from the primitive qualities in the other. Lastly, the 
 modus operandi of pre-existent protoplasm is not more unintel- 
 ligible than that of the electric spark. The conclusion is irre- 
 sistible, then, that all protoplasm being reciprocally convertible, 
 and consequently identical, the properties it displays, vitality 
 and intellect included, are as much the result of molecular con- 
 stitution as those of water itself. 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 39 
 
 It is evident, then, that the fulcrum on which Mr Huxley's 
 second proposition rests, is a single inference from a chemical 
 analogy. Analogy, however, being never identity, is apt to 
 betray. The difference it hides may be essential, that is, while 
 the likeness it shows may be inessential so far as the con- 
 clusion is concerned. That this mischance has overtaken Mr 
 Huxley here, it will, I fancy, not be difficult to demonstrate. 
 
 The analogy to which Mr Huxley trusts has two references : 
 one to chemical composition, and one to a certain stimulus that 
 determines it. As regards chemical composition, we are asked, 
 by virtue of the analogy obtaining, to identify, as equally simple 
 instances of it, protoplasm here and water there ; and, as re- 
 gards the stimulus in question, we are asked to admit the action 
 of the electric spark in the one case to be quite analogous to 
 the action of pre-existing protoplasm in the other. In both refer- 
 ences I shall endeavour to point out that the analogy fails; or, as 
 we may say it also, that, even to Mr Huxley, it can only seem to 
 succeed by discounting the elements of difference that still subsist. 
 
 To begin with chemical combination, it is not unjust to demand 
 that the analogy which must be admitted to exist in that, and 
 a general physical respect, should not be strained beyond its 
 legitimate limits. Protoplasm cannot be denied to be a chemical 
 substance ; protoplasm cannot be denied to be a physical sub- 
 stance. As a compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
 nitrogen, it comports itself chemically at least in ultimate 
 instance in a manner not essentially different from that in 
 which water, as a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, comports 
 itself chemically. In mere physical aspect, again, it may count 
 quality for quality with water in the same aspect. In short, so 
 far as it is on chemical and physical structure that the possession 
 of distinctive properties in any case depends, both bodies may 
 be allowed to be pretty well on a par. The analogy must be 
 allowed to hold so far ; so far but no farther. One step farther 
 and we see not only that protoplasm has, like water, a chemical 
 and physical structure ; but that, unlike water, it has also an 
 organised or organic structure. Now this, on the part of proto- 
 plasm, is a possession in excess ; and with relation to that ex- 
 cess there can be no grounds for analogy. This, perhaps, is 
 what Mr Huxley has omitted to consider. When insisting on 
 attributing to protoplasm the qualities it possessed, because of 
 its chemical and physical structure, if it was for chemical and 
 physical structure that we attributed to water its qualities, he 
 has simply forgotten the addition to protoplasm of a third struc- 
 ture that can only be named organic. " If the phenomena ex- 
 hibited by water are its properties, so are those presented 
 by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties." When Mr Huxley 
 speaks thus, Exactly so, we may answer : " living or dead " 
 
40 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 organic, or inorganic ! That alternative is simply slipped in and 
 passed ; but it is in that alternative that the whole matter lies. 
 Chemically, dead protoplasm is to Mr Huxley quite as good as 
 living protoplasm. As a sample of the article, he is quite con- 
 tent with dead protoplasm, and even swallows it, he says, in 
 the shape of bread, lobster, mutton, etc., with all the satisfactory 
 results to be desired. We shall not grudge Mr Huxley his 
 br'ead, his lobster, or his mutton. Still, as concerns the argu- 
 ment, it must be pointed out that it is only these that (as inor- 
 ganic) can be placed on the same level as water; and that living 
 protoplasm is not only unlike water, but it is unlike dead pro- 
 toplasm. Living protoplasm, namely, is identical with dead 
 protoplasm only so far as its chemistry is concerned (if even so 
 far as that); and it is quite evident, consequently, that differ- 
 ence between the two cannot depend on that in which they are 
 identical cannot depend on the chemistry. Life, then, is no 
 affair of chemical and physical structure, and must find its ex- 
 planation in something else. It is thus that, lifted high enough, 
 the light of the analogy between water and protoplasm is seen 
 to go out. Water, in fact, when formed from hydrogen and 
 oxygen, is, in a certain way, and in relation to them, no new 
 product; it has still, like them, only chemical and physical 
 qualities ; it is still, as they are, inorganic. So far as kind of 
 power is concerned, they are still on the same level. But not 
 so protoplasm, where, with preservation of the chemical and 
 physical likeness, there is the addition of the unlikeness of life, 
 of organisation, and of ideas. But the addition is a new world 
 a new and higher world, the world of a self-realising thought, 
 the world of an entelechy. The change of language objected to by 
 Mr Huxley is thus a matter of necessity, for it is not mere mole- 
 cular complication that we have any longer before us, and the 
 qualities of the derivative are essentially and absolutely different 
 from the qualities of the primitive. If we did invent the term 
 aquosity, then, as an abstract sign for all the qualities of water, 
 we should really do very little harm ; but aquosity and vitality 
 would still remain essentially unlike. While for the invention 
 of aquosity there is little or no call, however, the fact in the 
 other case is that we are not only compelled to invent, but 
 to perceive vitality. We are quite willing to do as Mr Huxley 
 would have us to do : look on, watch the phenomena, and name 
 the results. But just in proportion to our faithfulness in these 
 respects is the necessity for the recognition of a new world and 
 a new nomenclature. It is possible, certainly, to object that 
 there are different states of water, as ico and steam. But the 
 relation of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapour, 
 surely offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm dead to 
 protoplasm alive. That relation is not an analogy but an 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 41 
 
 antithesis. The antithesis of antitheses. In it, in fact, we 
 are in presence of the one incommunicable gulf the gulf 
 of all gulfs that gulf which Mr Huxley's protoplasm is as 
 powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has 
 ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into it 
 the mighty gulf between death and life. 
 
 The differences alluded to (they are, in order, 1, organisation 
 and life, 2, the objective idea design, and 3, the subjective 
 idea thought), it may be remarked, are admitted by those 
 very Germans to whom protoplasm, name arid thing, is due. 
 They, the most advanced and innovating of them, directly 
 avow that there is present in the cell " an architectonic principle 
 that has not yet been detected." In pronouncing protoplasm 
 capable of active or vital movements, they do by that refer, 
 they admit also, to an immaterial force, and they ascribe the 
 processes exhibited by protoplasm in so many words not 
 to the molecules, but to organisation and life. It is pointed 
 out by Kant generally, that the reason of the specific mode 
 of existence of every part of a living body lies in the whole, 
 whilst with dead masses each part bears this reason within 
 itself ; and this indeed is how the two worlds are differentiated. 
 A drop of water, once formed, is there passive for ever, sus- 
 ceptible to influence, but indifferent to influence, and what 
 influence reaches it is wholly from without. It may be added 
 to, it may be substracted from ; but infinitely apathetic 
 quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is indifferent 
 to its own physical parts. It is without contractility, without ali- 
 mentation, without reproduction, without specific function. Not 
 so the cell, in which the parts are dependent on the whole, and 
 the whole on the parts ; which has its activity and raison d'etre 
 within ; which manifests all the powers which we have described 
 water to want ; and which requires for its continuance conditions 
 of which water is independent. It is only so far as organisation 
 and life are concerned, however, that the cell is thus different from 
 water. Chemically and physically, as said, it can show with it 
 quality for quality. How strangely Mr Huxley's deliverances 
 show beside these facts ! He can " see no break in the series of 
 steps in molecular complication ;" but, glaringly obvious, there is a 
 step added that is not molecular at all, and that has its sup- 
 porting conditions completely elsewhere. The molecules are 
 as fully accounted for in protoplasm as in water ; but the sum 
 of qualities, thus exhausted in the latter, is not so exhausted in 
 the former, in which there are qualities due, plainly, not to the 
 molecules as molecules, but to the form into which they are 
 thrown, and the force that makes that form one. When the 
 chemical elements are brought together, Mr Huxley says, pro- 
 toplasm is formed, " and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena 
 
42 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 of life ;" but he ought to have added that these phenomena are 
 themselves added to the phenomena for which all that relates to 
 chemistry stands, and are there, consequently, only by reason 
 of some other determinant. New consequents necessarily 
 demand new antecedents. " We think fit to call different kinds 
 of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to 
 speak of the various powers and activities of these substances 
 as the properties of the matter of which they are composed." 
 That, doubtless, is true, we say; but such statements do not 
 exhaust the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen, and 
 attribute ^.properties to the properties of them. In a chemical 
 point of view, we ought to do the same thing for ice and steam ; 
 yet, maugre the chemical identity of the three, water is not ice, 
 nor is either steam. Do we, then, in these cases, make nothing 
 of the difference, and in its despite enjoy the satisfaction of 
 viewing the three as one ? Not so ; we ask a reason for the 
 difference; we demand an antecedent that shall render the 
 consequent intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydro- 
 gen is not enough in explanation of the threefold form ; and by 
 the very necessity of the facts w r e are driven to the addition of 
 heat. It is precisely so with protoplasm in its twofold form. 
 The chemistry remaining the same in each (if it really does 
 eo), we are compelled to seek elsewhere a reason for the 
 difference of living from dead protoplasm. As the differences 
 of ice and steam from water lay not in the hydrogen and 
 oxygen, but in the heat, so the difference of living from dead 
 protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, 
 and the nitrogen, but in the vital organisation. In all cases, 
 for the new quality, plainly, we must have a new explanation. 
 The qualities of a steam-engine are not the results of its simple 
 chemistry. We do apply to protoplasm the same conceptions, 
 then, that are legitimate elsewhere, and in allocating properties 
 and explaining phenomena we simply insist on Mr Huxley's 
 own distinction of " living or dead." That, in fact, is to us the 
 distinction of distinctions, and we admit no vital action 
 whatever, not even the dullest, to be the result of the molecular 
 action of the protoplasm that displays it. The very protoplasm 
 of the nettle-sting, with which Mr Huxley begins, is already 
 vitally organised, and in that organisation as much superior to 
 its own molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism, to its 
 own wood and iron. It were indeed as rational to say that 
 there is no principle concerned in a steam-engine or a watch 
 but that of its molecular forces, as to make this assertion of 
 organised matter. Still there are degrees in organisation, and 
 the highest forms of life are widely different from the lowest. 
 Degrees similar we see even in the inorganic world. The 
 persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the solar 
 
THE 
 
 UNI7ERS; 
 
 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 system, in some such proportion, perhaps, as the 
 In protoplasm, even the lowest, then, but much more con- 
 spicuously in the highest, there is, in addition to the molecular 
 force, another force unsignalised by Mr Huxley the force of 
 vital organisation. 
 
 But this force is a rational unity, and that is an idea ; and 
 this I would point to as a second form of the addition to the 
 chemistry and physics of protoplasm. We have just seen, it is 
 true, that an idea may be found in inorganic matter, as in the 
 solar and sidereal systems generally. But the idea in organised 
 matter is not one operative, so to speak, from without ; it is one 
 operative from within, and in an infinitely more intimate and 
 pervading manner. The units that form the complement of an 
 inorganic system are but independently and externally in place, 
 like units in a procession ; but in what is organised there is no 
 individual that is not sublated into the unity of the single life. 
 This is so even in protoplasm. Mr Huxley, it is true, desider- 
 ates, as result of mere ordinary chemical process, a life-stuff in 
 mass, as it were in the web, to which he has only to resort for 
 cuttings and cuttings in order to produce, by aggregation, what 
 organised individual he pleases. But the facts are not so : we 
 cannot have protoplasm in the web, but the piece. There is as 
 yet no matter of life ; there are still cells of life. It is no shred 
 of protoplasm no spoonful or toothpickful that can be recog- 
 nised as adequate to the function and the name. Such shred 
 may wriggle a moment, but it produces nought, and it dies. 
 In the smallest, lowest protoplasm cell, then, we have this 
 rational unity of a complement of individuals that only are for 
 the whole and exist in the whole. This is an idea, therefore ; 
 this is design: the organised concert of many to a single 
 common purpose. The rudest savage that should, as in Paley's 
 illustration, find a watch, and should observe the various con- 
 trivances all controlled by the single end in view, would be 
 obliged to acknowledge though in his own way that what he 
 had before him was no mere physical, no mere molecular 
 product. So in protoplasm : even from the first, but, quite 
 undeniably, in the completed organisation at last, which alone 
 it was there to produce ; for a single idea has been its one 
 manifestation throughout. And in what machinery does it not 
 at length issue? Was it molecular powers that invented a 
 respiration that perforated the posterior ear to give a balance 
 of air that compensated the fenestra ovalis by a fenestra rotunda 
 that placed in the auricular sacs those otolithes, those express 
 stones for hearing? Such machinery! The chordae tendinece 
 are to the valves of the heart exactly adjusted check-strings ; 
 and the contractile columnce carnece are set in, under contraction 
 and expansion, to equalise the length of these strings to their 
 
44 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 office. Membranes, rods, and liquids it required the express 
 experiment of man to make good the fact that the structure of 
 the ear exhibited really the most perfect apparatus possible for 
 the purpose. And are we to conceive such machinery, such 
 apparatus, such contrivances merely molecular ? Are molecules 
 adequate to such things molecules in their blind passivity, and 
 dead, dull insensibility ? Is it to molecular agency Mr Huxley 
 himself owes that "singular inward laboratory" of which he 
 speaks, and without which all the protoplasm in the world 
 would be useless to him ? Surely, in the presence of these 
 manifest ideas, it is impossible to attribute the single peculiar 
 feature of protoplasm its vitality, namely to mere molecular 
 chemistry. Protoplasm, it is true, breaks up into carbon, 
 hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen 
 and oxygen ; but the watch breaks similarly up into mere brass, 
 and steel, and glass. The loose materials of the watch even 
 its chemical materials if you will replace its weight, quite as 
 accurately as the constituents, carbon, etc., replace the weight 
 of the protoplasm. But neither these nor those replace the 
 vanished idea, which was alone the important element. Mr 
 Huxley saw no break in the series of steps in molecular com- 
 plication ; but, though not molecular, it is difficult to understand 
 what more striking, what more absolute break could be desired 
 than the break into an idea. It is of that break alone that we 
 think in the watch ; and it is of that break alone that we should 
 think in the protoplasm which, far more cunningly, far more 
 rationally, constructs a heart, an eye, or an ear. That is the 
 break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall never 
 explain it by molecules. 
 
 But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to account 
 either for vital organisation or the objective idea of design, 
 much more are they inadequate, in the third place, to account 
 for the subjective idea, for the phenomena of thought as 
 thought. Yet Mr Huxley tells us that thought is but the 
 expression of the molecular changes of protoplasm. This he 
 only tells us ; this he does not prove. He merely says that, if 
 we admit the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but 
 " direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are 
 composed," we must admit as much for the functions of the 
 highest. We have not admitted Mr Huxley's presupposition ; 
 but, even with its admission, we should not feel bound to admit 
 his conclusion. In such a mighty system of differences, there 
 are ample room and verge enough for the introduction of new 
 motives. We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought, let 
 its connection be what it may with, has never been proved to 
 result from, organisation, no improvement of the proof required 
 will be found in protoplasm. No one power that Mr Huxley 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 45 
 
 signalises in protoplasm can account for thought : not alimenta- 
 tion, and not reproduction, certainly ; but not even contractility. 
 We have seen already that there is no proof of contraction 
 being necessary even for the simplest sensation ; but much less 
 is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for the inner and 
 independent operations of the mind. Mr Huxley himself admits 
 this. He says : " Speech, gesture, and every other form of 
 human action are, in the long-run, resolvable into muscular 
 contraction ;" and so, " even those manifestations of intellect, 
 of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher 
 faculties, are not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as 
 to every one but the subject of them, they are known only as 
 transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the 
 body." The concession is made here, we see, that these 
 manifestations are differently known to the subject of them. 
 But we may first object that, if even that privileged " every 
 one but the subject" were limited to a knowledge of contrac- 
 tions, he would not know much. It is only because he knows, 
 first of all, a thinker and wilier of contractions that these 
 themselves cease to be but passing externalities, and transitory 
 contingencies. Neither is it reasonable to assert an identity of 
 nature for contractions, and for that which they only represent. 
 It would hardly be fair to confound either the receiver or the 
 sender of a telegraphic message, with the movements which 
 alone bore it, and without which it would have been impossible. 
 The sign is not the thing signified, it is but the servant of the 
 signifier his own arbitrary mark and intelligible, in the first 
 place, only to him. It is the meaning, in all cases, that is alone 
 vital ; the sign is but an accident. To convert the internality 
 into the arbitrary externality that simply expresses it, is for Mr 
 Huxley only an oversight. Your ideas are made known to your 
 neighbour by contractions, therefore your ideas are of the same 
 nature as contractions ! Or, even to take it from the other side, 
 your neighbour perceives in you contractions only, and therefore 
 your ideas are contractions ! Are not the vital elements here 
 present the two correspondent internalities, between which the 
 contractions constitute but an arbitrary chain of external com- 
 munication, that is so now, but may be otherwise again ? The 
 ringing of the bell at the window is not precisely the dwarf 
 within. Nor are Engineer Chappe's " wooden arms and elbow- 
 joints jerking and fugling in the air," to be identified with 
 Engineer Chappe himself. For the higher faculties, even for 
 speech, etc., assuredly Mr Huxley might have well spared himself 
 this superfluous and inapplicable reference to contraction. 
 
 But, in the middle of it, as we have seen, Mr Huxley concedes 
 that these manifestations are differently known to the subject 
 of them. If so, what becomes of his assertion of but a certain 
 
46 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 number of powers for protoplasm ? The manifestations of the 
 higher faculties are not known to the subject of them by con- 
 traction, etc. By what, then, are they known 1 According to 
 Mr Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of proto- 
 plasm; and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm must 
 possess powers other than those of his own assertion. Pre- 
 cisely, then, his one great power of contractility, Mr Huxley 
 himself confesses to be inapplicable here. Indeed, in his 
 Physiology (p. 193), he makes such an avowal as this: "We 
 class sensations, along with emotions, and volitions, and thoughts 
 under the common head of states of consciousness; but what 
 consciousness ie we know not, and how it is that anything so 
 remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result 
 of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the 
 the appearance of the Djin when Alladin rubbed his lamp in 
 the story." Consciousness plainly was not muscular contraction 
 to Mr Huxley when he wrote his Physiology ; it is only since 
 then that he has gone over to the assertion of no power in 
 protoplasm but the triple power, contractility, etc. But the 
 truth is only as his Physiology has it the cleft is simply, as Mr 
 Huxley acknowledges it there, absolute. On one side there is 
 the world of externality, where all is body by body, and away 
 from one another the boundless reciprocal exclusion of the 
 infinite object. On the other side, there is the world of 
 internality, where all is soul to soul, and away into one 
 another the boundless reciprocal inclusion of the infinite 
 subject. This even while it is true that, for subject to 
 be subject, and object object, the boundless intussuscepted 
 multiplicity of the single invisible point of the one, is bat the 
 dimensionless casket into which the illimitable Genius of the 
 other must retract and withdraw itself is the difference of 
 differences ; and certainly it is not internality that can be 
 abolished before externality. The proof for the absoluteness of 
 thought, the subject, the mind, is, on its side, pretty well per- 
 fect. It is not necessary here, however, to enter into that proof 
 at length. Before passing on, I may simply point to the fact 
 that, if thought is to be called a function of matter, it must be 
 acknowledged to be a function wholly peculiar and unlike any 
 other. In all other functions, we are present to processes which 
 are in the same sense physical as the organs themselves. So 
 it is with lung, stomach, liver, kidney, where every step can be 
 followed, so to speak, with eye and hand ; but all is changed 
 when we have to do with mind as the function of brain. 
 Then, indeed, as Mr Huxley thought in his Physiology, we are 
 admitted, as if by touch of Aladdin's lamp, to a world absolutely 
 different and essentially new to a world, on its side of the 
 iacommunicable cleft, as complete, entire, independent, self- 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 47 
 
 contained, and absolutely sui generis, as the world of matter on 
 the other side. It will be sufficient here to allude to as much 
 as this, with special reference to the fact that, so far as this 
 argument is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any the 
 very slightest difference. All the ancient reasons for the inde- 
 pendence of thought as against organisation, can be used with 
 even more striking effect as against protoplasm ; but it will be 
 sufficient to indicate this, so much are the arguments in question 
 a common property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its 
 own warrant ; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns, 
 " its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God." And that 
 is the strongest argument on this whole aspect. Through- 
 out the entire universe, organic and inorganic, thought is the 
 controlling sovereign ; nor does matter anywhere refuse its 
 allegiance. So it is in thought, too, that man has his patent of 
 nobility, believes that he is created in the image of God, and 
 knows himself a freeman of infinitude. 
 
 But the analogy, in the hands of Mr Huxley, has, we have 
 seen, a second reference that, namely, to the excitants, if we 
 may call them so, which determine combination. The modus 
 operandi^ Mr Huxley tells us, of pre-existing protoplasm in 
 determining the formation of new protoplasm, is not more 
 unintelligible than the modus operandi of the electric spark in 
 determining the formation of water ; and so both, we are left 
 to infer, are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is 
 rather a favourite with Mr Huxley. " But objectors of this 
 class," he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion to those who 
 hesitate to conclude from dead to living matter, " do not seem 
 to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing 
 about the composition of any body whatever as it is." In the 
 same neighbourhood, too, he argues that, though impotent to 
 restore to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not 
 hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, and 
 should not, consequently, any more hesitate because of any 
 mere difference of form to accept the analysis of dead for that 
 of living protoplasm. It is certainly fair to point out that, if 
 we bear ignorance and impotence with equanimity in one case, 
 we may equally so bear them in another ; but it is not fair to 
 convert ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power. 
 Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let them pass. 
 It is not considered that, if we know nothing about the com- 
 position of any body whatever as it is, then we do know 
 nothing, and that it is strangely idle to offer absolute ignorance 
 as a support for the most dogmatic knowledge. If such state- 
 ments are, as is really expected for them, to be accepted, yet 
 not accepted, they are the stultification of all logic. Is the 
 chemistry of living to be seen to be the same as the chemistry 
 
48 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing about the compo- 
 sition of any body whatever as it is ? We know perfectly well 
 that black is white, for we are absolutely ignorant of either as 
 it is ! The form of the calc-spar, which we can analyse, we 
 cannot restore ; therefore the form of the protoplasm, which we 
 cannot analyse, has nothing to do with the matter in hand ; and 
 the chemistry of what is dead may be accepted as the chemistry 
 of what is living ! In the case of reasoning so irrelevant it is 
 hardly worth while referring to what concerns the forms them- 
 selves ; that they are totally incommensurable, that in all forms 
 of calc-spar there is no question but of what is physical, while 
 in protoplasm the change of form is introduction into an entire 
 new world. As in these illustrations, so in the case immedi- 
 ately before us. No appeal to ignorance in regard to something 
 else, the electric spark, should be allowed to transform another 
 ignorance, that of the action of pre-existing protoplasm, into 
 knowledge, here into the knowledge that the two unknown 
 things, because of non-knowledge, are perfectly analogous ! 
 That this analogy does not exist that the electric spark and 
 pre-existing protoplasm are, in their relative places, not on the 
 same chemical level this is the main point for us to see ; and 
 Mr Huxley's allusion to our ignorance must not be allowed to 
 blind us to it. Here we have in a glass vessel so much hydrogen 
 and oxygen, into which we discharge an electric spark, and 
 water is the result. Now what analogy is it possible to perceive 
 between this production of water by external experiment and 
 the production of protoplasm by protoplasm *? The discrepancy 
 is so palpable that it were impertinent to enlarge on it.* The 
 truth is just this, that the measured and mixed gases, the vessel, 
 and the spark, in the one case, are as unlike the fortuitous food, 
 the living organs, and the long process of assimilation in the 
 other case, as the product water is unlike the product proto- 
 plasm. No ; that the action of the electric spark should be 
 unknown, is no reason why we should not insist on protoplasm 
 for protoplasm, on life for life. Protoplasm can only be pro- 
 duced by protoplasm, and each of all the innumerable varieties 
 of protoplasm, only by its own kind. For the protoplasm of the 
 worm we must go to the worm, and for that of the toad-stool to 
 the toad-stool. In fact, if all living beings come from protoplasm, 
 it is quite as certain that, but for living beings, protoplasm 
 would disappear. Without an egg you cannot have a hen 
 that is true ; but it is equally true that, without a hen, you cannot 
 
 * [ point out below, however, as one instance of this discrepancy, that were the 
 cases really analogous, the spark ought to produce not water, but itself. The Rev. Mr 
 Martin, in an article in the " British and Foreign Evangelical Review " for Jan. 1370, 
 adds (I do not quote his exact words) "or the water ought to have been produced, 
 not by a spark, but by water." I beg to thank Mr Martin for the suggestion, as well 
 as for the great kindness that inspires his eloquent article, 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 49 
 
 have an egg. So in protoplasm ; which, consequently, in the 
 production of itself, offers no analogy to the production, or 
 precipitation by the electric spark, not of itself, but of water. 
 Besides, if, for protoplasm, pre-existing protoplasm is always 
 necessary, how was there ever a first protoplasm ? 
 
 Generally, then, the analogy does not hold, whether in the 
 one reference or the other, and Mr Huxley has no warrant for 
 the reduction of protoplasm to the mere chemical level which 
 he assigns it in either. That level is brought very prominently 
 forward in such expressions as these : That it is only necessary 
 to bring the chemical elements " together," " under certain con- 
 ditions," to give rise to the more complex body, protoplasm, 
 just as there is a similar expedient to give rise to water ; and 
 that, under the influence of pre-existing living protoplasm, 
 carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent 
 weight of protoplasm makes its appearance, just as. under the 
 influence of the electric spark, hydrogen and oxygen disappear, 
 and an equivalent weight of water makes its appearance. All 
 this, plainly, is to assume for protoplasm such mere chemical 
 place and nature as consist not with the facts. The cases are, 
 in truth, not parallel, and the " certain conditions " are wholly 
 diverse. All that is said we can do at will for water, but nothing 
 of what is said can we do at will for protoplasm. To say we 
 can feed protoplasm, and so make protoplasm at will produce 
 protoplasm, is very much, in the circumstances, only to say, and 
 is not to say that, in this way, we make a chemical experiment. 
 To insist on a chemical analogy, in. fact, between water and 
 protoplasm, is to omit the differences not covered by the analogy 
 at all- thought, design, life, and all the processes of organisa- 
 tion ; and it is but simple procedure to omit these differences 
 only by an appeal to ignorance elsewhere. 
 
 It is hardly worth while, perhaps, to refer now again to the 
 difference here, however, once more incidentally suggested 
 between protoplasm and protoplasm. Mr Huxley, that is, 
 almost in his very last word on this part of the argument (see 
 page 38), seems to become aware of the bearing of this on what 
 relates to materiality, and he would again stamp protoplasm 
 (and with it life and intellect), into an indifferent identity. In 
 order that there should be no break between the lowest functions 
 and the highest (the functions of the fungus and the functions 
 of man), he has " endeavoured to prove," he says, that the 
 rotoplasm of the lowest organisms is " essentially identical 
 with, and most readily converted into that of any animal." On 
 this alleged reciprocal convertibility of protoplasm, then, Mr 
 Huxley would again found as well an inference of identity, as 
 the further conclusion that the functions of the highest, 
 
 D 
 
50 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 not less than those of the lowest animals, are but the molecular 
 manifestations of their common protoplasm. 
 
 Is this alleged reciprocal convertibility true, then 1 Is it true 
 that every organism can digest every other organism, and that 
 thus a relation of identity is established between that which 
 digests and whatever is digested 1 These questions place Mr 
 Huxley's general enterprise, perhaps, in the most glaring light 
 yet ; for it is very evident that there is an end of the argument 
 if all foods and all feeders are essentially identical both with 
 themselves and with each other. The facts of the case, however, 
 I believe to be too well known to require a single word here on 
 my part. It is not long since Mr Huxley himself pointed out 
 the great difference between the foods of plants and the foods 
 of animals ; and the reader may be safely left to think for 
 himself of ruminantia and carnivora, of soft bills and hard bills, 
 of molluscs and men. Mr Huxley talks feelingly of the possi- 
 bility of himself feeding the lobster quite as much as of the 
 lobster feeding him ; but such pathos is not always applicable : 
 it is not likely that a sponge would be to the stomach of 
 Mr Huxley any more than Mr Huxley to the stomach of a 
 sponge. 
 
 But a more important point is this, that the functions them- 
 selves remain quite apart from the alleged convertibility. We 
 can neither acquire the functions of what we eat, nor impart 
 our functions to what eats us. We shall not come to fly by 
 feeding on vultures, nor they to speak by feeding on us. No 
 possible manure of human brains will enable a corn-field to 
 reason. But if functions are inconvertible, the convertibility of 
 the protoplasm is idle. In this inconvertibility, indeed, functions 
 will be seen to be independent of mere chemical composition. 
 And that is the truth : for function there is more required than 
 either chemistry or physics. 
 
 It is to be acknowledged to notice a collateral but indis- 
 pensable consideration, for the sake of completeness, and by 
 way of transition to the final question of possible objections 
 that Mr Huxley would be very much assisted in his identifica- 
 tion of differences, were but the theories of the molecularists, 
 on the one hand, and of Mr Darwin, on the other, once for all 
 established. The three modes of theorising indicated, indeed, 
 are not without a tendency to approach one another ; and it is 
 precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph for 
 the doctrine of materialism. Mr Huxley, as we have seen 
 though what he desiderates is an autoplastic living matter that, 
 produced by ordinary chemical processes, is yet capable of con- 
 tinuing and developing itself into new and higher forms still 
 begins with the egg. Now the theory of the molecularists 
 would, for its part, remove all the difficulties that, for material- 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 51 
 
 ism, are involved in the necessity of an egg; it would place 
 protoplasm, as formed from molecules, undeniably at length on 
 a merely chemical level; and, his theory being sound, would 
 fairly enable Mr Darwin, supplemented by such a life-stuff, to 
 account by natural means for everything like an idea or thought 
 that appears in creation. The misfortune is, however, that we 
 must believe the theory of the molecularists still to await the 
 proof; while the theory of Mr Darwin has many difficulties 
 peculiar to itself. This theory, philosophically, or in ultimate 
 analysis, is an attempt to prove that design, or the objective 
 idea, especially in the organic world, is developed in time by 
 natural means. The time which Mr Darwin demands, it is true, 
 is an infinite time ; and he thus gains the advantage of his 
 processes being allowed greater clearness for the understanding, 
 in consequence of the obscurity of the infinite past in which they 
 are placed, and of which it is difficult in the first instance to 
 deny any possibility whatever. Still it remains to be asked, 
 Are such processes credible in any time f What Mr Darwin 
 has done in aid of his view is, first, to lay before us a knowledge 
 of facts in natural history of surprising richness ; and, second, 
 to support this knowledge by an inexhaustible ingenuity of 
 hypothesis in arrangement of appearances. Now, in both 
 respects, whether for information or even interest, the value of 
 Mr Darwin's contribution will probably always remain inde- 
 pendent of the argument or arguments that might destroy his 
 leading proposition ; and it is with this proposition that we 
 have here alone to do. As said, we ask only, jfs it true that the 
 objective idea, the design which we see in the organised world, 
 is the result in infinite time of the necessary adaptation of 
 living structures to the peculiarities of the conditions by which 
 they are surrounded I 
 
 Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalisation 
 may be viewed as our first objection. In ultimate abstraction, 
 that is, the only agency postulated by Mr Darwin is time 
 infinite time ; and as regards actually existent beings and 
 actually existent conditions, it is hardly possible to deny any 
 possibility whatever to infinitude. If told, for example, that 
 the elephant, if only obliged infinitely to run, might be con- 
 verted into the stag, how should we be able to deny ? So also, 
 if the lengthening of the giraffe's neck were hypothetically 
 attributed to a succession of dearths in infinite time that only 
 left the leaves of trees for long-necked animals to live on, we 
 should be similarly situated as regards denial. Still it can be 
 pointed out that ingenuity of natural conjecture has, in such 
 cases, no less wide a field for the negation than for the affirma- 
 tion ; and that, on the question of fact, nothing is capable of 
 being determined. But we can also say more than that we 
 
52 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 can say that any fruitful application even of infinite time to the 
 general problem of difference in the world is inconceivable. To 
 explain all from an absolute beginning requires us to commence 
 with nothing ; but to this nothing time itself is an addition. 
 Time is an entity, a something, a difference added to the 
 original identity ; whence or how came time 1 Time cannot 
 account for its own self; how is it that there is such a thing as 
 time ? Then no conceivable brooding even of infinite time 
 could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is such a 
 thing as space 1 No possible clasps of time and space, further, 
 could ever conceivably thicken into matter. How is it that 
 there is such a thing as matter ? Lastly, so far. no conceivable 
 brooding, or even gyrating, of a single matter in time and space 
 could account for the specification of matter carbon, gold, 
 iodine, etc. as we see and know it. Time itself remaining 
 unaccounted for, space, matter, and the whole inorganic world, 
 thus appear impassive to the action even of infinite time ; all 
 these differences are incapable of being accounted for so. 
 
 But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this reference, 
 which, though scientifically indefensible, is quite possible, how 
 about the transition of the inorganic into the organic? Mr 
 Huxley tells us that, for food, the plant needs nothing but its 
 bath of smelling-salts. Suppose this bath now a pool of a 
 solution of carbonate of ammonia ; can any action of sun, or air, 
 or electricity, be conceived to develop a cell or even so much 
 lump-protoplasm in this solution? The production of an 
 initial organism in any such manner will not allow itself to be 
 realised to thought. Then we have just to think for a moment 
 of the vast differences into which, for the production of the 
 present organised world, this organism must be distributed, to 
 shake our heads and say we cannot well refuse anything to an 
 infinite time, but still we must pronounce a problem of this 
 reach hopeless. 
 
 It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr Darwin claims 
 a solution' of this problem. Conditions concern all that relates 
 to air, heat, light, land, water, and whatever they imply. Our 
 second objection, consequently, is, that conditions are quite 
 inadequate to account for present organised differences, from a 
 single cell. Geological time, for example, falls short, after all, 
 of infinite time ; or, in known geological eras, let us calculate 
 them as liberally as we may, there is not time enough to account 
 for the presently- existing varieties, from one, or even several, 
 primordial forms. So to speak, it is not in geological time to 
 account for the transformation of the elephant into the stag 
 from acceleration, or for that of the stag into the elephant from 
 retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly of the 
 growth of the neck of the giraffe, or even of the elevation of 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 53 
 
 the monkey into man. Moreover, time apart, conditions have 
 no such power in themselves. It is impossible to conceive of 
 animal or vegetable effluvia ever creating the nerve by which 
 they are felt, and so gradually the Schneiderian membrane, nose, 
 and whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these effluvia are the con- 
 ditions of smell, and, ex hypothesi, ought to have created it. Did 
 light, or did the pulsations of the air, ever by any length of 
 time, indent into the sensitive cell, eyes, and a pair of eyes 
 ears, and a pair of ears?* Light conceivably might shine for 
 ever without such a wonderfully complicated result as an eye. 
 Similarly, for delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, 
 the ear is scarcely inferior to the eye ; and surely it is possible 
 to think of a whole infinitude of those fitful and fortuitous air- 
 tremblings, which we call sound, without indentation into any- 
 thing whatever of such an organ. 
 
 A third,' objection to Mr Darwin's theory is, that the play of 
 natural contingency in regard to the vicissitudes of conditions, 
 has no title to be named selection. Naturalists have long known 
 and spoken of the "influence of accidental causes;" but Mr 
 Darwin was the first to apply the term selection to the action of 
 these, and thus convert accident into design. The agency to 
 which Mr Darwin attributes all the changes which he would 
 signalise in animals is really the fortuitous contingency of brute 
 nature ; and it is altogether fallacious to call such process, or 
 such non-process, by a term involving foresight and a purpose. 
 We have here, indeed, only a metaphor wholly misapplied. 
 The German writer who, many years ago, said " even the 
 genera are wholly a prey to the changes of the external univer- 
 sal life," saw precisely what Mr Darwin sees, but it never struck 
 him to style contingency selection. Yet, how dangerous, how 
 infectious, has not this ungrounded metaphor proved ! It has 
 become a principle, a law, and been transferred by very genuine 
 men into their own sciences of philology, physiology, and what 
 not. People will wonder at all this by-and-by. But to point 
 out the inapplicability of such a word to the processes of nature 
 referred to by Mr Darwin, is to point out also the impossibility 
 of any such contingencies proceeding, by graduated rise, from 
 stage to stage, into the great symmetrical organic system the 
 vast plan the grand harmonious whole by which we are sur- 
 rounded. This rise, this system, is really the objective idea ; 
 but it is utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such 
 agency as natural contingency in geological, or infinite, or any 
 time. And it is this which the word selection tends to conceal. 
 
 We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact of 
 "reversion" or "atavism," Mr Darwin acknowledges his own 
 failure. We thus see that the species as species is something 
 independent, and holds its own insita vis naturae within itself, 
 
54 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value to Mr 
 Darwin's book ; nor even his ready ingenuity, whatever interest 
 it may lend: it is the material information it contains. The 
 ingenuity, namely, verges somewhat on that Humian expedient 
 of natural conjecture so copiously exemplified, on occasion of a 
 few trite texts, in Mr Buckle. But that natural conjecture is 
 always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may be said 
 that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory always to the 
 personally ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the im- 
 provement of the race ; or that, the weakest being always 
 necessarily left at home, the improvement was balanced by 
 deterioration; or that the ablest were necessarily the most 
 exposed to danger, and so, etc., etc., according to ingenuity, 
 usque ad infinitum. Trustworthy conclusion is not possible to 
 this method, but only to the induction of facts, or to scientific 
 demonstration. 
 
 Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able to level 
 out the difference between organic and inorganic, or between 
 genera and genera, or species and species. The differences 
 persist despite of both ; the distributed identity remains 
 unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, is Mr Darwin's theory 
 competent to explain the objective idea by any reference to 
 time and conditions. Living beings do exist in a mighty chain 
 from the moss to the man ; but that chain, far from founding, 
 is founded in the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural 
 growth of this into that. That chain is itself the most brilliant 
 stamp, the sign-manual, of design. On every ledge of nature, 
 from the lowest to the highest, there is a life that is its, a 
 creature to represent it, reflect it so to speak, pasture on it. 
 The last, highest, brightest link of this chain is man ; the incar- 
 nation of thought itself, which is the summation of this 
 universe ; man, that includes in himself all other links and 
 their single secret the personified universe, the subject of the 
 world. Mr Huxley makes but small reference to thought ; he 
 only tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of course. 
 
 It may be objected, indeed, to reach the last stage in this 
 discussion that, if Mr Huxley has not disproved the concep- 
 tion of thought and life " as a something which works through 
 matter, but is independent of it," neither have we proved it. 
 But it is easy for us to reply that, if " independent of," means 
 here "unconnected with" we have had no such object. We have 
 had no object whatever, in fact, but to resist, now the extravagant 
 assertion that all organised tissue, from the lichen to Leibnitz, 
 is alike in faculty, and again the equally extravagant assertion 
 that life and thought are but ordinary products of molecular 
 chemistry . As regards the latter assertion, we have endeavoured 
 to show that the processes of vital organisation (as self-produc- 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 55 
 
 tion, etc.) belong to another sphere, higher than, and very 
 different from, those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical 
 neutralisation ; that life, then, is no mere product of matter as 
 matter ; that if no life can be pointed to independent of matter, 
 neither is there any life-stuff independent of life ; and that life, 
 consequently, adds a new and higher force to chemistry, as 
 chemistry a new and higher force to mechanics, etc. As for 
 thought, the endeavour was to show that it was as independent 
 on the one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used, 
 summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then, is not 
 to be reached by any bridge from matter, that is a hybrid of 
 both, and explains the connection. The relation of matter to 
 mind is not to be explained as a transition, but as a contrecoup. 
 In this relation, however, it is not the material, but the mental 
 side, which the whole universe declares to be the dominant 
 one. 
 
 As regards any objections to the arguments which we have 
 brought against the identity of protoplasm, again, these will lie 
 in the phrase, probably, " difference not of kind, but degree," or 
 in the word " modification." The " phrase " may be now passed, 
 for generic or specific difference must be allowed in protoplasm, 
 if not for the overwhelming reason that an infinitude of various 
 kinds exist in it, each of which is self-productive and uninter- 
 changeable with the rest, then for Mr Huxley's own reason, that 
 plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals only organic. 
 As for the objection " modification," again, the same considera- 
 tion of generic difference must prove fatal to it. This were 
 otherwise, indeed, could but the molecularists and Mr Darwin 
 succeed in destroying generic difference ; but in this, as we 
 have seen, they have failed. And this will be always so : who 
 dogs identify, difference dogs him. It is quite a justifiable 
 endeavour, for example, to point out the identity that obtains 
 between veins and arteries on the one hand, as between these 
 arid capillaries on the other ; but all the time the difference is 
 behind us ; and when we turn to look, we see, for circulation, 
 the valves of the veins and the elastic coats of the arteries as 
 opposed to one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable walls 
 of the capillaries as opposed to both. 
 
 Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow the word 
 "modification" to efface them in the interest of the identity 
 claimed for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm is not bone-proto- 
 plasm, nor the protoplasm of the fungus the protoplasm of man. 
 Similarly, it is very questionable how far the word " modifica- 
 tion " will warrant us in regarding with Mr Huxley the " ducts, 
 fibres, pollen, and ovules " of the nettle as identical with the 
 protoplasm of its sting. Things that originate alike may surely 
 eventuate in others which, chemically and vitally, far from being; 
 
56 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 mere modifications, must be pronounced totally different. Such 
 eventuation must be held competent to what can only be named 
 generic or specific difference. The " child " is only "father of 
 the man " it is not the man ; who, moreover, in the course of 
 an ordinary life, we are told, has totally changed himself, not 
 once, but many times, retaining at the last not one single 
 particle of matter with which he set out. Such eventuations, 
 whether called modifications or not, certainly involve essential 
 difference. And so situated are the " ducts, fibres, pollen, and 
 ovules" of the nettle, which, whether compared with the 
 protoplasm of the nettle-sting, or with that in which they 
 originated, must be held to have assumed, by their own actions, 
 indisputable differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form, 
 substance, and faculty. 
 
 Much, in fact, depends on definition here ; and, in reference to 
 modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary when identity 
 shall be admitted to cease and difference to begin. There are 
 the old Greek puzzles of the Bald Head and the Heap, for 
 example. How many grains, or how many hairs, may we 
 remove before a heap of wheat is no heap, or a head of hair 
 bald? These concern quantity alone; but, in other case?. 
 bone, muscle, brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a 
 quantitative, but a qualitative difference; and in regard to 
 such differences, the word modification can be regarded ?,s 
 but a cloak, under which identity is to be shuffled into differ- 
 ence, but remain identity all the same. The brick is but 
 modified clay, Mr Huxley intimates, bake it and paint it as 
 you may ; but is the difference introduced by the baking and 
 painting to be ignored ? Is what Mr Huxley calls the " artifice " 
 not to be taken into account, leave alone the " potter " 1 The 
 strong firm rope is about as exact an example of modification 
 proper modification of the weak loose hemp as can well be 
 found ; but are we to exclude from our consideration the whole 
 element of difference due to the hand and brain of man ? Not 
 far from Burns's Monument, on the Calton Hill of Edinburgh, 
 there lies a mass of stones which is potentially a church, the 
 former Trinity College Church. Were this church again realised, 
 would it be fair to call it a mere modification of the previous 
 stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered fowl. 
 Chaucer describes to us the cock, " hight chaunteclere," that 
 was to his " faire Pertelotte " so dear : 
 
 ** His comb was redder than the fine corall, 
 Embattled, as it were a castle-wall ; 
 His bill was black, and as the jet it shone ; 
 Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes) ; 
 His nailes whiter than the lilie flour, 
 And like the burned gold was his colour." 
 
 Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow comb. 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. ' 57 
 
 wattles, spurs, and all a modified yolk, as to call the church, 
 but modified stones ? If, in the latter case, an element of 
 difference, altogether undeniable, seems to have intervened, is 
 not such intervention at least quite as well marked in the 
 former ? It requires but a slight analysis to detect that all the 
 stones in question are marked and numbered ; but will any 
 analysis point out within the shell the various parts that only 
 need arrangement to become the fowl *? Are the men that may 
 take the stones, and, in a re-erected Trinity College Church, 
 realise anew the idea of its architect, in any respect more 
 wonderful than the unknown disposers of the materials of the 
 fowl ? That what realises the idea should, in the one case, be 
 from without, and, in the other, from within, is no reason for 
 seeing more modification and less wonder in the latter than the 
 former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing the foAvl 
 in the egg, and as identical with the egg, than for seeing a 
 re-built Trinity College Church as identical with its unarranged 
 materials. A part cannot be taken for the whole, whether in 
 space or in time. Mr Huxley misses this. He is so absorbed in 
 the identity out of which, that he will not see the difference 
 into which, progress is made. As the idea of the church has 
 the stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its com- 
 mencement. But to this idea, and in both cases, the terminal 
 additions belong, quite as much as the initial materials. If the 
 idea, then, add sulphur, phosphorus, iron, and what not, it must 
 be credited with these not less than with the carbon, hydrogen, 
 etc., with which it began. It is not fair to mutter modification, 
 as if it were a charm to destroy all the industry of time. The 
 protoplasm of the egg of the fowl is no more the fowl than the 
 stones the church ; and to identify, by juggle of a mere word, 
 parts in time and wholes in time so different, is but self-decep- 
 tion. Nay, in protoplasm, as we have so often seen, difference 
 is as much present at first as at last. Even in its germ, even 
 in its initial identity, to call it so. protoplasm is already different, 
 for it issues in differences infinite. 
 
 Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be acknow- 
 ledged, is not nowadays restricted to Mr Huxley. In the 
 wonder that is usually expressed, for example, at Oken's 
 identification of the skull with so many vertebrae, it is forgot 
 that there- is still implicated the wonder which we ought to feel 
 at the unknown power that could, in the end, so differentiate 
 them. If the cornea of the eye and the enamel of the teeth are 
 alike but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for thinking 
 more of the adjective than of the substantive. Our wonder is 
 how, for one idea, protoplasm could become one thing here, and, 
 for another idea, another so different thing there. We are more 
 curious about the modification than the protoplasm. In the 
 
58 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 difference, rather than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the 
 wonder lies. Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm ; 
 analysis can detect no difference in them. They are to us, let 
 us say, as they are to Mr Huxley, identical in power, in form, 
 and in substance ; and yet on all these several thousand little 
 bits of apparently indistinguishable matter an element of differ- 
 ence so pervading and so persistent has been impressed, that, 
 of them all, not one is interchangeable with another ! Each 
 seed feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no 
 more grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. 
 Protoplasm is protoplasm : yes, but man's protoplasm is man's 
 protoplasm, and the mushroom's the mushroom's. In short, it 
 is quite evident that the word modification, if it would conceal, 
 is powerless to withdraw, the difference ; which difference, 
 moreover, is one of kind and not of degree. 
 
 This consideration of possible objections, then, is the last we 
 have to attend to ; and it only remains to draw the general 
 conclusion. All animal and vegetable organisms are alike in 
 'power, in form, and in substance, only if the protoplasm of 
 which they are composed is similarly alike ; and the functions 
 of all animal and vegetable organisms are but properties of the 
 molecular affections of their chemical constituents, only if 
 the functions of the protoplasm, of which they are composed, 
 are but properties of the molecular affections of its chemical 
 constituents. In disproof of the affirmative in both clauses, 
 there has been no object but to demonstrate, on the one hand, 
 the infinite non-identity of protoplasm, and, on the other, the 
 dependence of its functions upon other factors than its molecular 
 constituents. 
 
 In short, the whole position of Mr Huxley, that all organisms 
 consist alike of the same life-matter, which life-matter is, for its 
 part, due only to chemistry, must be pronounced untenable 
 nor less untenable the materialism he would found on it. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE SECOND (PHILOSOPHICAL) ISSUE ; OR, THE ESCAPE FROM 
 MATERIALISM THROUGH THE MODERN IDEALISM OF 
 IGNORANCE. 
 
 IN his necessity to say something, if only for " his own," Mr 
 Huxley, in reference to my phrase " the materialism he 
 would found on it," remarks, " one great object of my Essay 
 was to show that what is called * materialism ' has no sound 
 philosophical basis ! " The note of admiration I retain here is 
 Mr Huxley's own, and I am humbly of opinion that it is more 
 in place at the end of my sentence than at the end of his. At 
 the end of his, namely, it intimates indignation "that an express 
 effort to resist, should be treated as an express effort, to found, 
 materialism. At the end of mine, again, it intimates surprise 
 that Mr Huxley should seek to hide his alpha beneath his beta, 
 and upbraid me for openly signalising alpha alone, whereas I 
 equally openly signalised beta though placing it on one side. 
 If Mr Huxley does two things namely attempts, first, to set 
 up materialism, attempts, second, to knock down materialism 
 (see pages 20, 21, 23) how can allusion to the materialism 
 he sets up, guarded by an equal allusion to the materialism he 
 knocks down, be an " utter misreprentation ? " " One great 
 object of my Essay," says Mr Huxley ! Yes, truly; but what of 
 the other great, greater, and greatest object? "Utter mis- 
 representation ! " The only utter misrepresentation concerned 
 here is Pshaw ! the whole thing is beneath speech. 
 
 Nevertheless, my previous, merely parenthetic, treatment of 
 Mr Huxley's second issue shall now be completed by a con- 
 sideration in detail. We are to understand, then, that what Mr 
 Huxley claimed to have effected (physiologically) in fifty 
 paragraphs for materialism, he now claims equally to effect 
 (philosophically) in one-and-twenty against it ; and the means 
 to this are " the principles which the Archbishop of York holds 
 up to reprobation." These, as it is easy to know, concern the 
 so-called " limits of philosophical inquiry," and may be reduced 
 to what Mr Huxley holds to be our three ignorances: our 
 ignorance, namely, first, of cause; second, of substance; and, 
 
GO AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 third, of externality, or an external world. The evaugile, 
 according to Mr Huxley, consequently, is that, lost by knowledye, 
 we may be saved by ignorance I Indeed, it must be allowed that 
 the whole matter stands there very clear, consistent, definite, 
 irrefutable, satisfactory, before Mr Huxley's own consciousness. 
 The progress of knowledge generally, he is sure, has been ever 
 more and more towards the reduction of all phenomena into 
 the series and successions of material antecedents and conse- 
 quents ; and there cannot be a doubt but that life, and will, and 
 thought, must, in the end, be all similarly tucked in. These, 
 too, when explained, will only be explained as " results of the 
 disposition of material molecules." It does not follow, for all 
 that, is Mr Huxley's further thought, that what is called 
 materialism is true, or that " there is nothing in the world but 
 matter, force, and necessity ;" I indeed have reduced all, we may 
 further figure him to say, into material terms, and connected 
 all in material sequence ; but this system of a world may con- 
 ceivably lie all the same, so to speak, in the drop of water 
 in the hollow of an Arab boy's hand. That is, firstly, I know 
 not any necessity of connection in the ph enomena of the world, 
 though I know the fact of it ; and so volition may be free. 
 Secondly, I know not what anything is in itself, whether it be 
 named of matter, or whether it be named of mind ; and so 
 matter, as matter is not established, and mind as mind is not 
 destroyed. Thirdly, there is no doubt but that the system 
 all that we know the whole world does lie, not indeed in the 
 hollow of an Arab boy's hand, but in consciousness : all that we 
 know are but modes of consciousness bundles of our own 
 consciousnesses. In this way, while there is a most pleasing 
 definiteness for our knowledge, there is also a most pleasing 
 indefiniteness, for our ignorance. Or in this way, while, in know- 
 ledge, science is secured its rights, and thought its freedom, we 
 may quite satisfactorily limn God, free will, immortality, and 
 all that sort of thing (if we really do want it) in the mist of 
 our ignorance ! 
 
 This is Mr Huxley's relative position even to the irony, 
 though that is not so certain. It is just possible in that respect, 
 namely, that Mr Huxley is as simple and serious on the one 
 side, as he is simple and serious on the other as simple and 
 serious and self-complacent in regard to ignorance, as he is 
 simple, serious, and self-complacent in regard to knowledge. 
 For my part, indeed, I must confess myself to find Mr Huxley, 
 however valuable in his knowledge, much more interesting in 
 his ignorance in his ignorance and in the faith that is born of it. 
 I don't know anything about cause, he seems to say to himself, 
 or substance, or actual externality ; and therefore there is all that 
 dream possible! What a comfort, when the prose of know- 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 01 
 
 ledge wearies when materialism is a horror to our natural 
 hopes to possess in the poetry of ignorance a secret and sacred 
 chamber in which I can shut myself up legitimately to dream ! 
 What a comfort to be able to retire to this my Fetish and strong 
 god to listen to my prayers ! " Where ignorance is bliss, 'twere 
 folly to be wise ; " and surely it is ignorance that is the blissful 
 side here. Sufficiently curious, it is, too, that the Revulsion, to 
 which knowledge is professedly all in all, cannot do, nevertheless, 
 without the refuge of ignorance. How Mr Buckle mouths 
 solemnly roundabout, in that ample, empty, pretentious way of 
 his, dwelling ever on the sacredness of a man's religious con- 
 viction, which is for silence and secrecy alone ! One would think 
 it more natural that we should thank a man for communicating 
 to us that which, as most precious for him, might prove most 
 precious for us too. But no I gabble, chatter as you like about 
 your lower interests, but be absolutely silent about your higher 
 ones ! That is the wisdom of the perfectly admirable Mr Buckle ; 
 and Mr Huxley, as we see, is not without a certain approach to 
 it. Let us listen benevolently, he seems to say, to knowledge 
 in public ; but let us all the more worship ignorance in private ! 
 It is this ignorance we shall now consider in the order of its 
 three forms already named. 
 
 1. What concerns causality may be stated thus : The ma- 
 terial phenomena which constitute knowledge, are commonly 
 regarded as in connection the one with the other ; but into the 
 nature of this connection, into the necessity of this connection, 
 we do not at all see. All that we do see is the fact of invariable 
 association among them. We certainly have grounds for the 
 expectation that this association will not vary ; but these 
 grounds reducing themselves to this, that on the whole, it has 
 not yet varied ; it is impossible for us to say, it can not, or it 
 must not vary. Knowing the fact only, and not its conditioning 
 reason, we are obliged to say in fairness, it may vary. When 
 the sun rises, it is day this day, and any day we ever heard of; 
 but to-morrow it may be night. A stone flung into the air 
 returns to-day, but to-morrow it may not. Cork floats at 
 present, but in the future it may sink. The knife cuts the 
 apple now, but an hour hence the apple may cut the knife. 
 To-day sugar sweetens tea, to-morrow it may salt it. To-day 
 the stick breaks the window, to-morrow the window may break 
 the stick. To-day the gunpowder but repeats the spark, to- 
 morrow it may quench it. To-day the cloak Spends, to-morrow 
 it may swppend, etc., etc. Of course, we have no reason to expect 
 these changes ; but we have no guarantee against them. We 
 do not any day know what " pastures new " await us. And 
 this is good ; for this is philosophy, and in such philosophy we 
 have a checkmate to superstition, we have a checkmate to the 
 
62 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 priest, who dare not any longer, in the face of such verifications, 
 dogmatise. 
 
 2. These are great advantages, but they are not greater than 
 those the same " New Philosophy " extends to us from the con- 
 sideration of substance. What do I know about this that you 
 call substance ? Where is it ? What is it ? Can you let me 
 see it? I will believe it when I see it. Meantime I know 
 qualities only I know all things in their qualities, not in them- 
 selves, not in their substance. And this, that we know not 
 substance, is " the greatest discovery of psychology." Consider, 
 too, how, in turn, it is related to infallible knowledge and dog- 
 mas ! We are emancipated from the priest when we can show 
 him that we know appearances only. To pretend to know all 
 that, when he does not know what bread is ! 
 
 3. But a due application of the same principles to the ques- 
 tion of externality, elicits even greater advantages perhaps, and 
 in a double kind. For it not only secures us from what the 
 priest can do against us, but it renders us independent of what 
 he can do for us. I know no external world namely, or I 
 know no certainty of an external world. That fire that burns, 
 that sea that rages I know nothing of either but as a state of 
 my own. What I know of external things what 1 can know 
 of external things must be in my consciousness. What are 
 called such external things, then, are but bundles of my own 
 consciousnesses. To tell me, consequently, all that miraculous 
 story, is to tell me something which, even the existence of the 
 external world being unguaranteed, I must hold also to be 
 unguaranteed. This, at the same time, too, that my ignorance 
 of any actual external world and of any necessity, whether of 
 causality or substantiality in it, plenarily empowers imagination 
 to bring to my feet, in freedom, all the good things the priest 
 can only bring me in bondage God, Immortality, Free-will. 
 
 This, then, is the " New Philosophy ; " and who will deny its 
 might, and its majesty? Knowledge is precipitation into a 
 " slough," but ignorance is " escape ! " To be awake with 
 the understanding is to fall into " crass materialism ; " but to 
 dream with the imagination is to be safe within the crystal 
 battlements of eternal idealism ! Knowledge is but the wretched 
 old oil-lamp, that spills, and bothers us with its wick and its 
 filth; it is ignorance that is the Aladdin's lamp, and brings 
 elysium ! 
 
 But do these gentlemen mean it to be so ? To Mr Bain, for 
 example, is not the materialism all that is for him fundamental I 
 and is not the idealism but, profanely to say it, the tongue in 
 the cheek to the priest, who incontinently sinks silent, dumb- 
 founded'? But how are we to look at this extraordinary 
 Zwitterling, this extraordinary hermaphrodite? Is the world, 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 63 
 
 then, no stable system of reason ? Is it only as the unsteady 
 iridescence in the water-drop in the Arab boy's hand "? Thus 
 and thus to-day, may all things work loose from one another to- 
 morrow? Shall we never know anything but appearances 
 never know truth ? Ah ! well might Descartes doubt whether 
 he who sent us were not " a powerful and malicious being who 
 took pleasure in deluding us ! " 
 
 But let us just see whether all these things cannot be looked 
 at otherwise. 
 
 1. There is no cause, then ; there is only & first followed by a 
 second, an A by a B. Nexus between them there is none discern- 
 ible : there is only one imagined. Under the name of power, it 
 is familiar enough to conception to be sure, and current enough 
 in speech, but, all the same, it is a mere fancy, a voluntary- 
 involuntary phantasm, a gratuitous symbol, a vicarious image, 
 a personified abstraction, a Comtian entity, an Hegelian Vorstel- 
 lung a myth ! * The knowledge of this we owe to Hume, and 
 this one point is the spore from which that vast bulk of German 
 philosophy grew. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was but by counterstroke, so to speak, that 
 from that spore this bulk grew ; and it is not so certain that 
 Hume's faith corresponded with his speech. Indeed, it is only 
 a mistake, perhaps, to suppose that the sly Hume believed any 
 such view of cause and effect, though, with his usual arch 
 mischief, for perplexity to the priest, he wickedly started the 
 difficulties that gave rise to it. Perfectly willing to " under- 
 mine the foundations " of anything whatever that had seemed 
 hitherto only to serve " as a shelter to superstition," he knew 
 all the same, that " Nature would always maintain her rights, 
 and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever." 
 So it was that, even when just mentioning with such an air of 
 simple reference to what was a matter of course for everybody 
 the transparent fact, that, " in all reasonings from experience, there 
 is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any 
 argument or process of the understanding" so it was, I say, 
 
 * It is to this meaning I would confine the word conception, and for good and sufficient 
 reasons, it may be, despite the etymology. Idea is, of course, Idee, and can take on 
 every one of its significations. Kant, when exact and authoritative Hegel always 
 translates Sec/riff by Notio. There is left only (Conception for Vorstelluny, and Hegel 
 actually does render Vorstellungen by Conceptionen. We hate no choice then ! And 
 reflection will only the more and more approve the result. Representation, for example, 
 is a hideous word that will never pass current ; and Dugald Stewart's admirable chapter 
 on "Conception" will show that that word to him was quite the Hegelian Vorstel- 
 lung. Concept, again, reminds too much of conception satisfactorily to render egriff, 
 and is, for the most part, only in philosophical use by an authority that in another 
 generation will cease to be significant. All this, however, only where exactitude is 
 required. Otherwise and in general, idea conveys perfectly well, not only Begriff, but 
 even Vorstellung. A ny interchange of the words in question is perhaps possible to the 
 experienced translator, except only the unpardonable barbarism of notion for Vorstel- 
 lung. Notion ought to be kept sacred for the logical notion. 
 
64 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 that even when just mentioning this, and remarking that " we 
 cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction " of cause 
 and effect, he knew and admitted that that " step " and that 
 " reason " lay in " a natural relation." 
 
 In reality, the whole thing has been, on the part of Hume, 
 but a wicked riddle, the sly rogue (or the arch rogue if you will) 
 always speaking with such an air of innocent conviction, that 
 his allegation " no reason can be discovered " was taken at 
 once without a moment's misgiving quite as the matter of fact 
 for which it seemed to be taken by himself. 
 
 But, suppose we ask now after all these years, and after all 
 that breadth of clamour is it matter of fact ? Can it possibly 
 be matter of fact 1 Must not the reason of the conjunction of 
 things, as cause and effect, lie, as Hume admits, in " a natural 
 relation f And must not that natural relation be discoverable ? 
 In other words, must not " the step of the mind," the " process 
 of the understanding," which Hume seemed to assume to fail, 
 actually not fail? and must it not be capable of being 
 demonstrated ? 
 
 Let the reader fully realise to himself what the assertion 
 means, that the cause A is only an invariable first, and the effect 
 B only an invariable second. All, so, is evidently reduced to the 
 single character succession, and with the single predicate invari- 
 able, the explanation being added the invariability is only what 
 we may call a positive one. That is : so far as. we know yet, A 
 has been first, B has been second, but this invariable succession 
 so far as experience goes, must be seen to be what it is only 
 an invariable succession so far as experience goes. We have but 
 a fact before us, we know not how, or whence, or why ; we 
 have absolutely no reason whatever for the fact. The succession 
 is, has been, may be ; but it is a dry fact a dry fact of mere 
 succession. It is but a conjunction of abstracts ; it is no concrete 
 no concrete of two, the one from the other, and in the other, 
 and through the other. There is no reason in the very midst of the 
 succession, by virtue of which the one is only because the other 
 is. It is a fact that there is A now, and B then ; there is no 
 relation whatever between them but that of the order in time. 
 A is A, B is B ; each on its own side is for itself, and sui generis, 
 and independent. There is no community between them. 
 They are absolutely disparate heterogeneous. Each is foreign, 
 alien to the other. Different from, they are indifferent to, each 
 other. They are not inwardly in union ; they are but outwardly 
 beside each other. But for the order in time, they are not one 
 whit more connected, the one with the other, than this ink- 
 bottle and yonder coal-scuttle. 
 
 Surely the statement itself is its own involuntary felo de se ! 
 To the humano capiti, shall we join then the ccrvicem equinam f 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 65 
 
 Shall the mulier formosa superne be indeed desinent in the atrum 
 piscem ? Or if, whether for us, or the poet, there shall be a 
 concrete that is rational, a concrete that is even natural, a 
 concrete that is a concrete, shall not the one term, in all cases, 
 grow out of the other? All will be different then. The terms 
 shall not be heterogeneous, but homogeneous. The succession 
 shall not be only positively, arbitrarily, invariable, but necessarily, 
 rationally invariable. The succession, in fact, shall not be a 
 succession at all. As what in all nature is closest, it shall be 
 seen to be also what in its own nature is closest not a suc- 
 cession, but a conjunction, a connection, a union, the most 
 intimate, the most deeply inward union possible at all events, 
 the most intimate, the most deeply inward union the whole 
 inorganic world can show. 
 
 Hume shall have simply hoaxed us, then shall have simply 
 hoaxed metaphysics hoaxed metaphysics with his billiard 
 balls, as Charles the Second did physics with his fish 1 
 
 Yes ; it is really so. Neither a priori nor a posteriori is there 
 the incommunicable gulf in causality which Hume so naturally 
 assumed, and so speciously glossed over. 
 
 Billiard balls are not by any means all that may be regarded, 
 or alone what may be regarded, as types of causality. Here is 
 a full sponge, and here is a hand that contracts on. it with an 
 effect that is known. Have we here but an indifferent A, and 
 an indifferent B, that are only outwardly beside each other, and 
 not at all inwardly, and with reason, wrought together ? Can 
 we conceive of what happens here as but succession a succes- 
 sion that, though thus to-day, may be otherwise to-morrow? 
 A bit of wood weighed after immersion in water is found to be 
 heavier than it was before immersion. In the same way, a letter 
 that in India weighed under the ounce, may in England weigh 
 over it. But, in either case, is the one fact but an indifferent 
 second to the other 1 Expose the boards of a book to the fire, 
 and, Scotice, they "gizzen" but not without a perfect intelligence 
 on our part of why. When the pound in the one scale plumps 
 on the board, and the ounce in the other kicks the beam, does 
 any one settle his chin in his neckerchief, and gravely expatiate 
 on a first and a second in all times past that may, nevertheless, 
 reverse themselves to-morrow c ? Surely arithmetic here has 
 absolute possession and to the perfect conviction of everybody 
 of the entire mystery! When to divide a sheet of paper 
 evenly, I fold it in two and tear in the line of the fold, is the 
 result a mere invariable consequent without perception of a 
 reason? So, also, that a blunt knife is a better paper-cutter 
 than a sharp one surely we see why ! Place a cannon ball 
 on a sofa cushion, is the indentation that follows, a mere con- 
 sequent, the reason of which we cannot understand. Doors 
 
66 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 slam, shutters rattle, draughts whistle in such events, or in the 
 action of windmills and watermills, of the teeth of saws or of 
 the teeth of men, can it be pretended that we have before us 
 only dry facts, the one now and the other again, but without 
 any reason of connection inwardly that makes the one but a 
 birth out of the other 1 Is it really just once for all so, that the 
 lees sink and the scum rises, or is there an explanation for both 
 events'? When, overhearing your wonder at the strangely 
 blazing windows in a wood in France, the kindly Commere 
 threw in, "C'est par rapport au soleil, Messieurs !" was not that 
 rapport precisely the "step" the "understanding" wanted? 
 The Nile periodically overflows, but it does not only just do so 
 we now know why. An eclipse involves, not only an in- 
 variable first, and an invariable second, but a reason as well. 
 It is surely not inexplicable why bodies throw shadows. So it 
 is also with day and night, with the seasons, wdth the tides in 
 all these cases we have not only an invariable succession, but a 
 reasoned invariable succession. It is really no mystery why the 
 key fits the lock, or why Bruce's calthrops overthrew the 
 English horse. To varnish an egg preserves it, but we are not 
 left with the naked fact only, we can give an account of it as 
 well. If you turn a turtle on its back, you do not wonder at it 
 remaining so, anymore than at the cut stalk falling, or the bladder 
 you prick collapsing. You do not draw your boots on with a 
 pair of skewers, and you do not say the only reason why not is 
 that boot-hooks are the invariable antecedents. Candle-making 
 (-dipping) admits of explanation. A glass-house is not the un- 
 connected, the dry antecedent of strawberries at Christmas. 
 The navvie that digs, uses his pick first and his shovel second 
 with perfect satisfaction as well to understanding as to per- 
 ception. The paint on my house-door has its sufficient reason in 
 that painter's pot. Antarctic regions have more sea than Arctic 
 ones ; and yet, though warmer in summer, they are colder in 
 winter ; not without " rapport" perhaps, to the relative distance 
 at these seasons of the sun from either. The mason uses a 
 mallet of wood rather than a hammer of iron, and there is a 
 rationale of his act which is not uninteresting (in the case of 
 the mallet a deflection in striking hardly tells, and the action of 
 the point of the chisel is more delicately modifiable perhaps.) 
 The water that runs clear from the filter was brown when it 
 entered ; but it has left its sufficient reason behind it. A wedge 
 splits a tree this you understand, and you are not surprised 
 that a knife does not. The same breath that cools your soup 
 will warm your hands ; but in neither case is the first to the 
 second only a dry one ; it brings foison with it, and the virtue 
 that connects them. Why rag is better for a cut than paper, 
 why a watch-spring acts, why a stone hurts and a feather- 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 67 
 
 pillow does not all that you see. The fire that hardens clay 
 will soften wax: you can tell why in the one case, if, perhaps, 
 not in the other. For this, too, is to be admitted, that we can- 
 not always tell why. This, however, is but a moment's jar, and 
 the jar itself is the proof of the position. When the king, of the 
 dumpling in Peter Pindar, wonders " How, how the devil got the 
 apple in I " we laugh ; but the wonder we laugh at is the naive 
 confutation, as at hands of general mankind indeed, of the 
 mere pedantry that has made Hume's riddle a theory I If here 
 got there, there must have been a door of communication between 
 them. In all cases of causality, the first is not just on this side 
 and the other just on that side, because it is once for all just so : 
 in all cases of causality there is whether we know it or not 
 a door of communication between the two sides. Hume made 
 believe to shut this door up, and half a dozen worthy men have 
 taken him at his word ! 
 
 It is worth while considering, however, that the very men 
 who explicitly deny all this sort of concrete virtue in the facts 
 themselves, and assert as well a mere provisional invariability 
 as a mere dry succession of an abstract first and an abstract 
 second those very men are in certain circumstances very in- 
 terestingly forward to refute themselves implicitly. Just tell 
 Mr Mill that Moses with a dry rod brought water from a dry 
 rock ! I do not think that that eminent philosopher will have 
 any difficulty there. And yet if causality is but a succession a 
 succession that may vary a succession in which the first is only 
 the first, the second only the second one would expect, on the 
 part of Comte and his disciples, rather a desire to accept the 
 miracle than that hot haste to reject it. Nay, the miracle they 
 refuse at the hands of Moses, they are ready to accept at the 
 hands of Mr Crosse : they are quite ready to believe it possible 
 for him to grind wet maggots out of dry electricity ! 
 
 It may illustrate the position, at all events, should 1 say here 
 that the impossibility the Revulsion feels in regard to miracles 
 is precisely the impossibility I feel in regard to abstract succes- 
 sion. I cannot entertain the idea of mere positivity of associa- 
 tion, without community, without intermediating nexus. Very 
 curious ! Our modern Berkeleians, too, wry themselves into 
 the same mhumanity : they, too, see indifferent units indif- 
 ferently in succession, but at the will of God contriving to 
 secure for themselves thus (see Browning's "Caliban") a 
 Setebos to worship, and the creation of a Setebos to admire ! 
 
 Independent succession is no belief of society at large, 
 however, in which reference I hold Sir John Herschel to name 
 the true concrete state of the case (in his "Astronomy," 
 p. 232), thus : 
 
 " Whatever attempts have been made by metaphysical 
 
68 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 writers to reason away the connection of cause and effect, and 
 fritter it down into the unsatisfactory relation of habitual 
 sequence, it is certain that the conception of some more real 
 and intimate connection is quite as strongly impressed upon 
 the human mind as that of the existence of an external 
 world." 
 
 Beyond all doubt, then, there is a certain community between 
 the cause and the effect, and in this community lies the reason 
 of the nexus. In short, the reason of the causal nexus is 
 Identity. " The rain/' says Hegel, " is the cause of the wet- 
 ness," " but it is the same water in the wetness that is in the 
 rain." It is the same physical water on the street, then, that 
 was in the cloud, and, similarly, the water in my beard is the 
 same physical water that was in my breath. A like state of 
 the case is visible in every one of the various examples of 
 causality that we have seen above. 
 
 Nor is it different with Hume's billiard balls : it is identically 
 the same motion now in the one that was then in the other, 
 and the examination of them, before the motion, or after the 
 motion, as independent individuals, was beside the point. That 
 is, abstraction was made by Hume from all that constituted 
 causality in the balls, and no wonder he could not find in them 
 what he himself had just thrown out. The motion was alone 
 the cause, and it was idle to examine them apart from it. And 
 here we see that what are regarded as causes are, commonly, 
 concrete objects with a variety of elements in them beside that 
 or those which may stand at the moment in the causal nexus. 
 Contraction in the hand, and in the sponge ; water in the cloud, 
 and on the street ; motion in the bat, and in the ball : in all such 
 cases we see but a single import, and it is common to the cause 
 and to the effect. It, in effect, is both. So far as this import 
 goes, then, there is a relation of identity between the cause and 
 the effect, however different they are otherwise. They are not 
 only externally associated, they are internally united they are 
 united in a relation of identity, and this, whatever elements of 
 difference they may bring with them otherwise. The hand is 
 very different from the sponge, the cloud from the street, the 
 ball from the bat ; but as copula between the respective pairs 
 of di/erents, we have, in order, the identity of contraction, of 
 water, and of motion. The knife cuts the apple : shall we, like 
 Hume, examine knife and apple apart, and say how different 
 they are blinding ourselves to the one single absolute 
 identity that is in the cause and the effect of which they are 
 but the vehicles 1 
 
 Sometimes, too, plainly, the identity may not be explicit, but 
 only implicit ; or it may even be present in the form of diversity. 
 It is really by identity that you would explain shadows, 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 69 
 
 eclipses, etc., and yet the shadow (darkness) is the reverse of 
 light. 
 
 This, then, is the assertion : In all cases of causality, the tie, 
 the copula, denied by Hume really exists ; the " step taken by the 
 mind" really is supported on a " process of the understanding;" 
 this tie, copula, step, process, has explicitly, or implicitly its 
 grounds and sufficient reason in Identity. 
 
 One can conjecture much opposition here. Is the pain of a 
 burn identical with the flame that caused it, then 1 This, one 
 can hear the Revulsion bawl out ; to a man ! Causality as such, 
 however, ceases with the inorganic world. Assuch,it has no place 
 in will, reason ; and vitality itself has already set bounds to it 
 not but that a good stick may smash my skull and my wife's 
 pipkin on precisely the same principles. 
 
 It is the motion, then, that is both the true cause and the true 
 effect in the case of the billiard balls. In the ordinary row of 
 such balls suspended for experiment by strings, the motion with 
 which the last leaps off is precisely the same motion with which 
 the first was allowed to impinge. It may seem a contradiction 
 and a difficulty here that both balls the first and the last 
 being allowed, at once, and similarly, to impinge on the rest, 
 the one motion seems merely to be counteracted and destroyed 
 by the other. Is the double motion, thus, then, only neutralised 
 arid lost ? No ; the motion counterbalanced in mass reappears 
 in molecule ; and we meet here the doctrine of the Conserva- 
 tion of Force or Energy. Not quite stable in its metaphysics 
 Eet, this doctrine is probably sound, so far, in its physics, 
 iglit and heat, however they may express themselves to 
 sentiency, or to a medium that dilates on molecular vibration, are, 
 in themselves, it seems, only motions, as magnetism, galvanism, 
 etc., in some unexplained way, may also be. In. that case, we 
 may conceive nothing in space but matter and motion. Nay, 
 in that case, may we not conceive nothing in space but motion 
 alone ? Matter itself shall be but counterbalanced motion as 
 it were implicit motion, which the flutter of a feather, in 
 changing the direction of opposing tendencies, may instantly 
 render explicit. A weight on a spring these are but counter- 
 vailing motions, and the slightest shift would enable them to 
 express themselves. The earth itself, then, may be conceived 
 not that I deny matter as but a congeries of belts of 
 countervailing motions ; and something of a rational basis 
 may be seen thus to be extended to those who feign matter 
 to be the expression of innumerable centres whence, what, 
 or how, one knows not ! of force. The fact of countervailing 
 motion must be allowed, however, to demonstrate as in 
 the spring and the weight the reality of motion without 
 its expression. One can see also the possible dispersion of any 
 
70 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 motion in mass through the conduction of motion in molecule 
 vibration.* 
 
 It is through this doctrine of the conservation of force that, 
 in regard to causality, Mr Bain, with a very proper air of 
 modest self-denial, makes a clutch at originality. He attributes 
 to himself the "innovation" of "rendering" " cause " " by the 
 new doctrine called the Conservation of Force," etc. But is 
 such " clutch " possible to one who denies power, and asserts 
 succession only ? There is the mechanical equivalent of heat : 
 what meaning can M E have for Mr Bain ? Will he believe 
 that there is heat here, and M E there, only as two units of a 
 mere succession which in their own nature are not identical ? 
 Manifestly, there is a community of nature in the two sides of 
 the conservation of force that summarily truncates any use of 
 them by Mr Bain at the same time that it is admirably 
 corroborative of the true theory of causality which places its 
 principle in Identity. Heat is motion, and really precisely the 
 same motion is M E. When stopped by a wall (say), the motion 
 of a cannon ball vanishes as in mass, but reappears as in 
 molecule heat. We see, then, in such an example, very 
 strikingly, how the virtue that conjoins the two terms in 
 causality is Identity. Power, therefore, is no abstraction, but has 
 an implement, & filling of identity. Instead, consequently, of the 
 conservation of force explaining causality, as is preposterously 
 the proposition of Mr Bain, it is causality that, on the contrary, 
 explains it. That is, Causality, as the universal, subsumes the 
 Conservation of Force, as the particular, under it. It is but 
 inconsistency, then, in - Mr Bain, that though the temptation 
 may be acknowledged would lead him, self-paralysed, as he is, 
 in regard to power, to the clutch alluded to. 
 
 With reference to Mr Huxley, now, the result, so far, is 
 this : There is a necessary nexus in the relation of cause and 
 effect, and no interest of spirit is to be rescued from material- 
 ism by the denial of it. 
 
 2. Nor is this one whit more possible by means of the 
 expedient that we do not know things in themselves that we 
 only know phenomena that we do not know what substance 
 is. Mr Huxley's reason for ignorance here is precisely my 
 reason, and everybody else's, for knowledge. As little as the 
 causal nexus disappears because it is no mere affair of sense, 
 so little does substance disappear for any similar reason. We 
 
 * It is not in any man's power, then, to set bounds to the stored motion of the 
 universe, and it is not even in any man's power to prove the molecular motion of the 
 sun perishable. If all energy must end, why has it not ended ? The infinitude of the 
 past gives the same possibility of an end in the past, as the infinitude of the future 
 the possibility of an end in the future. Energy, then, has either begun, or has always 
 been. If begun, the principles of the beginning, in all probability, still are ; if always 
 been, then it always will be. 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 71 
 
 can know a substance only through its qualities, and it is but 
 an absurdity to adduce this, our knowledge of it, only as the 
 proof and the guarantee of our ignorance of it. Consider this ! 
 We know substance only by reason of qualities, therefore we 
 do not know it. That is, we do not know by means of the very 
 reason through which we do know ! Is not this a mere paying 
 of ourselves with words'? A thing that does not act can 
 never be known, and is only equal to nothing. Is it reason- 
 able, then, to say that, precisely when it makes itself known by 
 acting, precisely then it makes itself unknown by acting, as if 
 it had never acted ? How else can a thing be known but by 
 acting by its qualities ? and is the only medium of admission 
 to be made also the single medium of exclusion ! We do not 
 know things in themselves, because we only know what they 
 are for us ! Well, but what they are for MS, is really what 
 they are in themselves ? A thing, a substance, is not a bundle, 
 is not a collection of qualities ; it is as much an intussusception 
 of its qualities as an ego is of its ideas. There is not greenness 
 here in this crystal, transparency there, and sourness yonder. 
 It is the substance, the single and individual unit, the it, that is 
 green, and likewise transparent, and also sour. Would you 
 have me, in independence of the greenness, and transparency, 
 and sourness, take you out the it, and show it you ? and even 
 then, would you be able to know it, but as otherwise or similarly 
 green, and transparent, and sour, etc. If you will blindfold yourself 
 then you must ; but it is your own act. I know the character of a 
 man only by knowing what this character is for me ; but do I not 
 also then know what it is in itself ? After I have thoroughly 
 put myself at home with Shakespeare, or Burns, or Cromwell, 
 am I immediately to turn round and stultify myself by figure- 
 ing some substance, some in itself that is only gratuitous and 
 foreign to the case. Mr Huxley is in his chamber : Does he 
 then mystify himself into an impossible chaos by muttering to 
 himself Ah, that fire, that carpet, that table, these chairs, these 
 books, they are really something quite else than what they are 
 for me what they are for me is a small matter nothing but 
 what they are not for me Ah ! that were something, did I but 
 know that ! Does Mr Huxley really hide from himself what 
 that picture on the wall is for him and in itself, by disconsolately 
 murmuring, I am absolutely ignorant I can never know what 
 canvas, what hemp is in itself? Is not all that talk about an 
 in itself that is not for him idle? Does he not inhabit the room? 
 and is it not a thoroughly-intelligible system? So with the 
 world : it is an intelligible external system. This stone 
 that I take up, am I really to mystify or stultify myself in its 
 regard by saying If my muscles were infinitely stronger, it 
 would dissolve in my grasp? It is black, it might be red. 
 
72 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 What then? Is not the lobster boiled the same lobster that it was 
 unboiled ? Mr Huxley, surely, does not expect us to follow him 
 into that silly, wholly antiquated and effete rubbish that bids 
 us cross our fingers to examine a pea, or squint our eyes to look 
 at the table. Shall we, then, only behold the world aright by 
 putting our head between our legs ? Is a cramp truth, convul- 
 sions reason, or distortion philosophy ? 
 
 I do know substance, and I know it by and through the 
 qualities with which I know so well how to serve myself. Here 
 is a printed Shakespeare : is there in its regard an in itself 
 which I do not know, but which, if known, would dwarf into 
 insignificance all that I do know 1 Why, I do know it in itself 
 its very paper and boards, if you like I know them in them- 
 selves too. There is no such thing anywhere in it as this in 
 itself, that is said to be unknown. All that the book need be, 
 should be, can be in itself, it is for me. The true in itself 
 there is Shakespeare's soul, and that I have access to at least, 
 all that can be done is done for my access. Thinkers like Mr 
 Huxley are very wroth at obscurantism; but, by the same involun- 
 tary retribution through which they fall into the miraculous by 
 fleeing it, they themselves are the obscurantists proper. At 
 the very moment that they insist on knowledge, they insist also 
 on dream a dream that stultifies all knowledge into fragments 
 of an unknown inane. We must not delude ourselves with 
 phrases, then phrases that are but subterfuges and evasions. 
 God has not sent us to know only mockeries here appear- 
 ances. On the contrary, He has given it us to know things 
 things in themselves a concrete si/stern of things, as well 
 external as internal, that is perfectly intelligible. 
 
 3. And this brings us to Mr Huxley's last ignorance the 
 ignorance of externality, the reason for which is that we know 
 only consciousnesses, and ^consciousness. Mr Huxley makes 
 only a convenience of this, however; in his actual world it is no 
 ingredient. That actual world is simply materialism ; and the 
 idealism it talks of in consciousness is only, as it were, an 
 occasional flash from a private lantern that is peculiarly con- 
 venient at times for the reassurance of others, perhaps of our- 
 selves ! Let us have the materialism of knowledge for our 
 daily work, he says, but the idealism of ignorance for our nightly 
 dream and the good of our souls, if we will 1 The expedient, 
 therefore, does not seem a very hopeful one an expedient that 
 would counsel reason to take refuge in ignorance. But neither 
 are the facts on its side. That we only know within is no 
 reason that what we know may not be really without. The 
 truth is that we can test it, and try it, and lay stumbling blocks 
 in the way of it, and experiment on it, and prove it in a thousand 
 ways to the result that we do know an actually independent 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 73 
 
 external system of things. To attempt to crush all this into 
 the water-drop in the hollow of an Arab boy's hand, or, what is 
 about the same thing, into the point of consciousness, and leave 
 it there, is but supererogatory delusion, and the trick of a word. 
 But, so, we have a demonstration at once of the nullity of Mr 
 Huxley's " extrication " and of the reality of his materialism. 
 Doubt is always an unusual substitute for certainty ; but doubt 
 in regard to causality, or substantiality, or externality, is 
 gratuitous and unfounded. We must decline, then, the safe- 
 guard of scepticism with which Mr Huxley would make believe 
 to protect us from materialism ; and even hint, but as gently as 
 possible, that he who, at the hour that now is, would seriously 
 proffer us (the two fingers gravely crossed over the pea !) 
 any such doctrines, is, philosophically, as late, as he was, 
 physiologically, precipitate. Perhaps that he is late in the one 
 case is the why he was precipitate in the other. But, all that 
 being so, at the same time that he would express all phenomena 
 in terms of matter would explain mind itself by the "disposi- 
 tion of mere material molecules," I cannot see that Mr Huxley 
 is possessed of any the very smallest reason for refusing for 
 himself the name of materialist. When he has placed materialism 
 as an entire system of knowledge over or on his right hand, he 
 cannot expect much confidence from us in what may be the 
 sneer that points to ignorance, and the word idealism, profanely 
 to say it, over the left. Would Mr Huxley but really take refuge 
 in the principle of Descartes self-consciousness ! Is philosophy 
 are the philosophers, Plato," Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, 
 Descartes, Spinosa, Locke, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, 
 Hegel these, and all the rest, with their enormous writings 
 are they only there to say, We know nothing but successive 
 phenomena in consciousness ? Knowing that, are we dispensed 
 from the labour of the region ? Knowing that, and saying that, 
 are we, while we work only for science, and in matter, perfectly 
 cultivated, enlightened minds in the centre who hold the balance 
 even ? That is in one word the position of Mr Huxley ; but is 
 it likely that the vast, heaven-scaling mountain of philosophy 
 has yielded only such a drowned mouse of a result? And can 
 we claim to be philosophers by knowing no more ? It is quite 
 certain, however, that Messrs Mill and Bain write enormous 
 books and for no other result After all, then, Mr Huxley may 
 have his own excuse ! It is for us to know, nevertheless, that 
 the position is wrong that philosophy, perhaps, only begins 
 where Mr Huxley ends ; for the problem of said phenomena is 
 to it what they are, not simply that they are. But into this, 
 plainly, we cannot enter at present. 
 
74 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC'. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 It is argued by Mr Huxley in his essay on "Yeast," as against 
 Kant, who conceived generally, " the special peculiarity of the 
 living body to be that the parts exist for the sake of the 
 whole, and the whole for the sake of the parts," that by the 
 resolution of the living body " into an aggregation of quasi- 
 independent cells," " this conception has ceased to be tenable." 
 But it is not so certain that this is so, whether as regards the 
 cells, or as regards the body. A cell is still a whole of parts, and 
 both parts and whole are in the relation assigned by Kant. 
 Then, when the actual inter-connections of the body and the 
 cells are studied, the result is not w^hat Mr Huxley would seem 
 to infer as to the primacy, so to speak, and independence of 
 the cells. They, rather, are seen to be but subservient ministers, 
 while the body itself is the prime and dominating agent. In 
 illustration here, let me quote from my review of Dr Beale's 
 recent work on Protoplasm, in the Edinburgh Courant for 
 February 25, 1870: 
 
 " All the tissues and organs of which we consist are built up, 
 according to Dr Beale, by millions of minute living particles. 
 Each of these is a unit of germinal matter, surrounded or faced 
 by formed material. This formed material goes to constitute 
 the tissue or organ skin, muscle, bone, liver, lung, etc. in 
 which the living particle of germinal matter finds itself . . . 
 Materials from the blood constantly pass into the centres of the 
 particles of the germinal matter. These particles are thus fed, 
 for they convert the materials they receive into their own 
 substance, at the same time that, at their own surfaces, they 
 themselves are constantly passing into the non-living state of 
 formed material. This, then, is the process. Germinal matter 
 (a cell) converts pabulum (from the blood) into itself, multiplies, 
 and lastly dies (in an external ring or external surface) into 
 formed material. The three matters italicised constitute thus 
 Dr Beale's physiological elements, and of these the germinal 
 matter alone lives. . . . The least erudite reader may be 
 able to form to himself, perhaps now, a perfectly clear idea of 
 the nature, place, and business of these working units (the cells 
 or germinal particles) in the general economy. It is not 
 difficult for any one to picture a skeleton, or to conceive it filled 
 up with muscles, and covered with skin. As little difficult 
 will it be, imaginatively, to place lungs, heart, stomach, and 
 viscera, within the trunk, and to connect every part of these, 
 as well as of bone, muscle, and skin, with the marrowy brain 
 within the skull, by means of the threads of the nerves. These 
 
AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 75 
 
 are the general outlines of the structure, and this structure is 
 now on the whole to be conceived as formed material thrown up 
 by millions of germinal particles seated beneath or around it. 
 The entire surface of the skin, for example, is to be conceived 
 as so much formed material casing so many millions of germinal 
 particles that cluster over its inner surface. Vessels, again, in 
 similar illustration, are to be viewed as so many pipes and 
 pipelets, the solid canals of which are only the formed material 
 of innumerable germinal particles around them. In this way, 
 then, the germinal particles almost show as so many ]ivmg paving- 
 beetles constantly pushing up the continuity of the streets and 
 walls of the bone, skin, brain, that constitute man. But this 
 being so, is it possible to avoid realising to ourselves, and in a 
 very vivid manner, the absurdity of the pretensions of Mr 
 Huxley to materialise all the processes of the organism by 
 means of the microscope ? Why, of this organisation itself as 
 such that is, of the mechanical apparatus it presents to us 
 the microscope tells us nothing whatever. The microscope only 
 enables us to see a single paving-beetle, a single cell, a single 
 germinal particle in connection with more or less of its own 
 portion of formed material a single coral, so to speak, and 
 the polype that died into it : it tells us nothing whatever of the 
 vast machine which these polypes have all unconsciously built 
 up with their coral. The mighty and complex fabric of man is, 
 after all, despite its innumerable parts , a unity : all these parts 
 but go towards that unity, are sublated into it. Now, what of 
 all that does microscopic observation tell us? Why, simply 
 nothing. Myriads of miserable Egyptians carried stones to the 
 Pyramid ; but no microscopic watching of any one of these, 
 stone and all, would ever explain the Pyramid itself its many 
 to a one. So with the frame of man; on which, would we 
 understand it aright, it is infinitely more necessary to turn the 
 lens, so to speak, of an all-embracing telescope, than to turn 
 on its infinitesimal particles the minuteness of the microscope. 
 . . . It must be evident, indeed, that the microscopic particle 
 throws but small light on, so to speak, the telescopic whole. 
 Consider the supply of pabulum alone. If with that pabulum 
 the germinal particles build up individually the various units of 
 the machine, it is the machine itself, and as a whole, that 
 supplies that pabulum. Nay, it is the machine itself that 
 properly alone lives, that connects all particles, living or dead, 
 into a unity and purpose of which unity the particles them- 
 selves, whether living or dead, know naught. . . . The 
 probability is, then, that the germinal particles have little action 
 besides providing for the keeping up of the tissues, and that it 
 is on these tissues, for the most part, that the functions of the 
 single unity depend." 
 
76 
 
 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 
 
 In short, man's life is in his mechanism as a whole in his 
 coral ; and not in the polypes that supplied it to him. That is, 
 it is the so-called dead formed material that alone truly lives, 
 and not the so-called living germinal matter that is assumed to 
 die into it. Or, as I said at first, the cells are but as servants 
 to the body itself, which is alone the lord ; the primacy lies 
 with the latter and not with the former ; Kant's dictum is as 
 valid to-day as it was yesterday. 
 
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