form, or of substance, we have seen _lacunæ_ 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, for example, “It is more than probable
that _when_ the vegetable world _is_ thoroughly explored we _shall_ find
all plants in possession 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 contractility
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 contemplating 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 protoplasm 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 _lis_ is still _sub judice_. This admission is
strengthened by the words, too, “If we use this term” (protein) “with
such _caution_ as may properly arise out of our _comparative ignorance_
of the things for which it stands;” which entitle us to recommend, 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:
Therefore “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 connection, 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 Goethe’s for reduction
of the powers of man to those of contraction, digestion, and
reproduction, can be regarded as an admission to the same effect. The
epigram runs thus:—
“Warum treibt sich das Volk so, und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,
Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.
Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell’ er sich wie er auch will.”
That means, quite literally translated, “Why do the folks bustle and
bawl? 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? 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 _lacunæ_,
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 dogmatize
on protoplasm, we may understand from this avowal of Kühne’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 professors. We have seen already, in the
consideration premised, that Mr. Huxley’s hypothesis of a protoplasm
_matter_ is unsupported, 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 protoplasm-cell.
Rindfleisch, for example, in his recently-published ‘Lehrbuch 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 Kühne’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 Leydig and Schultze, who shall be the express
eliminators of the membrane—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 Brücke 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 Stricker demonstrate the
disappearance 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 _rôle_, and describe the
formation in the impregnated egg of a new nucleus; while there are
others again who resist every attempt to degrade it. Böttcher 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 otherwise that indicate spontaneity. In this reference we may
allude to the weighty opinion of the late Professor Goodsir, who
anticipated 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 interesting 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 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 the mathematician. 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 personality 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 combination 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 microscopic 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 authorized 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 by
the materiality of the latter? Or what if the functions of protoplasm
are not properties of its mere molecular constitution?
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 (protoplasm) 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 existence 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 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 preëxisting
protoplasm, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen uniting into an
equivalent weight of protoplasm, there is the same warrant for
attributing 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 properties 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 together. 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 preëxistent protoplasm is not
more unintelligible than that of the electric spark. The conclusion is
irresistible, 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 constitution as
those of water itself.
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 conclusion 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 regards 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 preëxisting protoplasm in the other. In
both references I shall endeavor 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 substance. 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 organized
or organic structure. Now this, on the part of protoplasm, is a
possession in excess; and with relation to that excess 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
structure that can only be named organic. “If the phenomena exhibited 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!” 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 content 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.—Still, as concerns the argument, it must be pointed out that it
is only these that can be placed on the same level as water; and that
living protoplasm is not only unlike water, but it is unlike dead
protoplasm. Living protoplasm, namely, is identical with dead protoplasm
only so far as its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that); and
it is quite evident, consequently, that difference 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 explanation 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 organization, and of ideas. But the addition is a
new world—a new and higher world, the world of a self-realizing 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 molecular
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.
There are certainly different states of water, as ice and steam; but the
relation of the solid to the liquid, or of either to the vapor, surely
offers no analogy to the relation of protoplasm dead to protoplasm
alive. That relation is not an analogy but an 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.