s no other signs of life than those of
feeding and reproducing its kind, to protoplasm endowed with the power
of spontaneous motion, and finally to protoplasm that thinks and
reasons, speculates and philosophises. Now why should any of the various
phenomena of life exhibited by these varieties of protoplasm be supposed
to be of a different class from the appearances of activity exhibited by
any of the varieties of lifeless matter? What reason is there why, for
instance, thought should not be termed a property of thinking
protoplasm, just as congelation is a property of water, and
centrifugience of gas? Professor Huxley protests that he is aware of no
reason. We call, he says, the several strange phenomena which are
peculiar to water, 'the properties of water, and do not hesitate to
believe that in some way or other they result from the properties of the
component elements of water. We do not assume that something called
_aquosity_ entered into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as
soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their
places in the facets of the crystal or among the leaflets of the hoar
frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and faith that, by the
advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way
as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as
we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its
parts or the manner in which they are put together.' Why, then, when
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of
the matter of life makes its appearance in their place, should we assume
the existence in the living matter of a something which has no
representative or correlative in the unliving matter that gave rise to
it? Why imagine that into the newly formed hydro-nitrogenised oxide of
carbon a something called vitality entered and took possession? 'What
better philosophical status has vitality than aquosity?' 'If scientific
language is to possess a definite and constant signification, we are,'
he considers, 'logically bound to apply to protoplasm or the physical
basis of life the same conceptions as those which are held to be
legitimate elsewhere.' Wherefore, he concludes, that 'if the phenomena
exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by
protoplasm _its_ properties,' and that if it be correct to describe 'the
properties of water as resulting from the nature and disp