the objective idea—design, and the subjective idea—thought), it may be
remarked, are admitted by those very Germans to whom protoplasm, name
and 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 organization
and life. It is remarked by Kant 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, susceptible to influence, but
indifferent to influence, and what influence reaches it is wholly from
without. It may be added to, it may be subtracted from; but infinitely
apathetic quantitatively, it is qualitatively independent. It is
indifferent to its own physical parts. It is without contractility,
without alimentation, 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’être_ 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 organization 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 supporting 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, protoplasm is formed, “and this
protoplasm exhibits the phenomena 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 _its_ properties to the properties of them. In a chemical
point of view, we ought to do the same thing for ice and steam; yet, for
all the chemical identity, 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 hydrogen
is not enough in explanation of the threefold form; and by the very
necessity of the facts we 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 so), 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 organization. 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
organized, and in that organization 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 organized matter. Still there are degrees
in organization, 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 system,
in some such proportion, perhaps, as the rhizopod to man. In protoplasm,
even the lowest, then, but much more conspicuously in the highest, there
is, in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized by
Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.
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 organized 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 organized 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, desiderates, 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 organized 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 recognized 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 organized 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 contrivances 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
organization 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 _chordæ tendineæ_ are to the valves of the
heart exactly adjusted check-strings; and the contractile _columnæ
carneæ_ are set in, under contraction and expansion, to equalize their
length to their office. Membranes, rods, and liquids—it required the
express experiment of man to make good the fact that the inventor of the
ear had availed himself of the most perfect apparatus possible for his
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 material 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 complication; but, though not
molecular, it is difficult to understand what more striding, 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 organization 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, organization, no improvement of the proof required will be found
in protoplasm. No one power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can
account for thought: not alimentation, 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 contractions, he would not know much. It is only because he
knows, first of all, a thinker and willer 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 neighbors by contractions, therefore your ideas are of the
same nature as contractions! Or, even to take it from the other side,
your neighbor 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 communication, 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 number of powers for
protoplasm? The manifestations of the higher faculties are not known to
the subject of them by contraction, etc. By what, then, are they known?
According to Mr. Huxley, they can only be known by the powers of
protoplasm; and therefore, by his own showing, protoplasm must possess
powers other than those of his own assertion. Mr. Huxley’s 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 is 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 appearance of
the Djin when Aladdin 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 but 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 perfect. 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 incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire,
independent, self-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 independence of
thought as against organization, 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 side. Throughout
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 free-man 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
preëxisting 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
favorite 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 neighborhood, 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 composition 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 statements 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 of dead protoplasm, because we know nothing
about the composition 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 (the spar) we _can_ analyze, we
cannot restore; therefore the _form_ of the protoplasm, which we
_cannot_ analyze, 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 themselves; 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 immediately 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 preëxisting 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 preëxisting 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 protoplasm. 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 produced 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 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, preëxisting protoplasm, is always necessary,
how was there ever a first protoplasm?
Generally, then, Mr. Huxley’s 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 conditions,” 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 preëxisting 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 organization; 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, 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 “endeavored to prove,” he says, that the protoplasm 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, not less than those of the lowest animals, are
but the molecular manifestations of their common protoplasm.
Plainly here it is only the consideration, not of function, but of the
alleged reciprocal _convertibility_ that is left us now. Is this true,
then? 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? 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 possibility 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 themselves 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 functions there is more required
than either chemistry or physics.