Part 9

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.

The differences alluded to (they are, in order, organization and life, 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.