plasm, or any other, except by matter already living. No known plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. "A plant," says Mr. Huxley himself, "supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm."

Professor Huxley, indeed, tells us that "when carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are brought together under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm; and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life." Under certain conditions: we must not let these words slip in so quietly, as Mr. Huxley would have it. These conditions, be they what they may, constitute the difference between dead protein and living protoplasm. And here I may remark that Mr. Mill has been showing (I think successfully, and I have been aiding him in my own way) that what are usually called conditions are truly parts of the cause, which is the sum of the conditions, the cause, as I have labored to prove, being dual, plural, complex, always implying more than one agent; and it is only when all are present that the effect is produced. We say the organ produces music on the condition of one playing on it; but surely the man playing is as essential a part of the cause as the organ itself.* By no skill can the chemist turn

"It is very common to single out one only of the antecedents under the denomination of Cause, calling the others

CONDITIONS PARTS OF CAUSES.

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protein into protoplasm. Professor Huxley thinks it can be done on conditions to him unknown. When he knows what the conditions are, and makes them known to me, I am sure I will be able to discover adaptation and design in them. Herbert Spencer tells us that chemists have shown that many sup

merely Conditions." "The real cause is the whole of these antecedents; and we have, philosophically speaking, no right to give the name of cause to one of them, exclusive of the others."Mill's Logic, B. III. c. v. § 3. I have shown that in material nature there is always need of the action of two or more agents, in order to an effect. Method of Divine Government, B. II. c. i. § 1. An Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy, c. xiii.: "If a ball moves in consequence of another striking it, there is need of the one ball as well as the other; and the cause, properly speaking, consists of the two in a relation to each other. But not only is there a duality or plurality in the cause: there is the same (Mr. Mill has not noticed it) in the effect. The effect consists not merely of the one ball, the ball struck and set in motion, but also of the other ball which struck it, and which has now lost part of its momentum. By carrying out this doctrine, we can determine what is meant by 'condition' and 'occasion,' when the phrases are applied to the operation of causation. When we speak of an agent requiring a 'condition,' an 'occasion,' or 'circumstances,' in order to its action, we refer to the other agent or agents required, that it may produce a particular effect. Thus, that fire may burn, it is necessary to have fuel or a combustible material. In order that my will may move my arm, it is needful to have the concurrence of a healthy motor nerve. So much for the dual or plural agency in the cause. But there is a similar complexity in the effect," &c. To apply this general principle to the case before us: protein, it is said, may become protoplasm under certain conditions. These conditions, whatever they be, constitute the difference between the two; and Mr. H. has thrown no light on the production of protoplasm, till he has shown us what are these conditions, which ought to be represented as forming an essential part of the cause.

posed organic substances are inorganic. Be it so, that men may have made a mistake in the past which they are seeking to rectify in the present. And then, in the usual dogmatic way of a man who may see clearly much truth, but does not see other truths by which it is modified, he assures us that no chemist doubts but he will be able to turn inor

ganic into organic matter. All I have to say on this is, that when the chemist has done it, and shown the way by which he has done it, I am confident I will be able to point out a curious adaptation in these conditions previously unknown, but now known, by which he has accomplished the feat. If the things composing the conditions were in the star dust, they were there as seeds ready to burst forth in due time. If they have come from without, they have come in so appropriately as to show that they have come of purpose, whether by natural law or not, we may not be able to tell till the man of science has made them known to us.

And then "protoplasm," says Stirling, "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 toadstool to the toadstool. In fact, if all living beings came from protoplasm, it is quite as certain that but for living beings protoplasm would disappear." Where then did we get the first protoplasm and the various kinds of protoplasm, is still the question.

And then it is to be remembered that naturalists

NEED OF SEED OR EGG.

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do not admit that protoplasm is all that is necessary to produce the living organism. It has long been known that organized matter, vegetable and animal, is made up of cells. "All the great German histologists still hold by the cell, and can hardly open their mouths without mention of it." "They speak still of cells as self-complete organisms that move and grow, that nourish and reproduce themselves, and that perform specific functions. Omnis cellula e cellula is the rubric they work under as much now as ever." Not only so, but it seems that "brain cells only generate brain cells, and bone cells bone cells." If a cell can only be produced from a cell, the question when and whence and how do we get the first cell is still pressed upon us, and requires us to call in a new set of conditions, which I hold must imply a fitting and a purpose.

Nor is this all. Not only do all cells proceed from cells; but all organisms, all plants and animals, proceed from a seed or egg. It is still true as ever, omne vivum ab ovo. Not even protoplasm can give us an organized being, even the lowest, without a germ. An attempt was made a few years ago by M. Pouchet to get organized beings, not from unorganized, which he did not try, but from stagnant water containing organized matter without germs. But M. Pasteur, the distinguished naturalist of Paris, came after him and showed that there must have been germs in the water which was employed. He showed first that, if you allowed him to destroy all germs in the matter experimented on by expos

ing it to a sufficiently high temperature, no living creatures would appear. He showed farther by experiments conducted in low, marshy places, then on the Jura range, and finally on the high Alps that living beings did or did not appear just according as there were seeds in the organized matter; that is, that they came forth in greatest numbers in the low, marshy places, in smaller numbers in the higher region of Jura, and that very few appeared in the cold region of the Upper Alps. And in regard to the general question, he has demonstrated that when air is passed through cotton wool, which, acting as a strainer, arrests the germs, no life can be made to appear. And to prove that this was not effected by any occult change produced in the air by cotton wool, he did the same by a bent tube, which allows free passage to the air, but does not allow the germs to pass, as in doing so they would have to mount upward. These experiments were reckoned as decisive at the time, and are referred to by the great body of naturalists in Great Britain and on the Continent as decisive still. Mr. Huxley refers to them in his recent address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and says: "They appear to me now, as they did seven years ago, to be models of accurate experimentation and logical reasoning." It is thus shown that not only is there no proof of such a thing as spontaneous generation, that is, the production of organized out of unorganized matter, but that there cannot be organisms formed out of organic matter till a seed