Volume 9 — The Physical Basis Of Life.

[Footnote 128]

We know this rather remarkable discourse only as republished in the columns of The New York World, where it had a sensational title which we have abridged. Professor Huxley's name stands high among English physicists or scientists, and his discourse indicates considerable natural ability, and familiarity with the modern school of science which seeks the explanation of the universe and its phenomena without recognizing a creator, or any existence but ordinary matter and its various combinations. The immediate purpose of the professor is to prove the physical or material basis of life, and that life in all organisms is identical, originating in and depending on what he calls the protoplasm.

The protoplasm is formed of ordinary matter; say, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These elements combined in some unknown way give rise to protoplasm; the protoplasm gives rise to the plant, and, through the plant, to the animal; and hence all life, feeling, thought, and reason originate in the peculiar combination of the molecules of ordinary, inorganic matter. The plant differs from the animal, and the animal from man, only in the different combinations of the molecules of the protoplasm. We see nothing in this theory that is new, or not as old as the physics of the ancient Ionian school.

The only novelty that can be pretended is the assumption that all matter, even inorganic, is, in a certain sense, plastic, and therefore, in a rudimentary way, living. The same law governs the inorganic and the organic world. But even this is not new. Many years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson asserted the identity of gravitation and purity of heart, and we ourselves are by no means disposed to deny that there is more or less analogy between the formation of the crystal or the diamond and the growth of the plant. It is not, perhaps, too much to say that the law of creation is one law, and we have never yet been convinced of the existence of absolutely inert matter. Whatever exists is, in its order and degree, a vis activa, or an active force. Matter, as the potentia nuda of the schoolmen, is simple possibility, and no real existence at all. There is and can be no pure passivity in nature, or purely passive existences. We would not therefore deny a certain rudimentary plasticity to minerals, or what is called brute matter, though we are not prepared to accept the plastic soul, asserted by Plato, and revived and explained in the posthumous and unfinished works of Gioberti under the term methexis, which is copied or imitated by the mimesis, or the individual and the sensible. Yet since, as the professor tells us, the animal can take the protoplasm only as prepared by the plant, must there not be in inorganic matter a preparation or elaboration of the protoplasm for the use of the plant?

The professor speaks of the difficulty of determining the line of demarcation between the animal and the plant; but is it difficult to draw the line between the mineral and the plant, or between the plant and the inorganic matter from which it assimilates its food or nourishment? Pope sings,

"See through this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth;"

but we would like to have the professor explain how ordinary matter, even if quick, becomes protoplasm, and how the protoplasm becomes the origin and basis of the life of the plant. Every plant is an organism with its central life within. Virchow and Cl. Bernard by their late discoveries have proved that every organism proceeds from an organite, ovule, or central cell, which produces, directs, and controls or governs the whole organism, even in its abnormal developments. They have also proved that this ovule or central cell exists only as generated by a pre-existing organism, or parent, of the same kind. The later physiologists are agreed that there is no well authenticated instance of spontaneous generation. Now this organite must exist, live, before it can avail itself of the protoplasm formed of ordinary matter, which is exterior to it, not within it, and cannot be its life, for that moves from within outward, from the centre to the circumference. Concede, then, all the facts the professor alleges, they only go to prove that the organism already living sustains its life by assimilating fitting elements from ordinary matter. But they do not show at all that it derives its life from them; or that the so-called protoplasm is the origin, source, basis, or matter of organic life; or that it generates, produces, or gives rise to the organite or central cell; nor that it has anything to do with vitalizing it. Hence the professor fails to throw any light on the origin, matter, or basis of life itself.

It may or it may not be difficult in the lower organisms to draw the line between the plant and the animal, and we shall urge no objections to what the professor says on that point; we will only say here that the animal organism, like the vegetable, is produced, directed, and controlled by the central cell, and that this cell or ovule is generated by animal parents. There is no spontaneous generation, and no well authenticated instance of metagenesis. Like generates like, and even Darwin's doctrine of natural selection confirms rather than denies it. It is certain that the vegetable organism has never, as far as science goes, generated an animal organism. Arguments based on our ignorance prove nothing. The protoplasm can no more produce or vitalize the central animal than it can the central vegetable cell, and, indeed, still less; for the animal cannot, as the professor himself asserts, sustain its life by the protoplastic elements till they have been prepared by the vegetable organism. Whence, then, the animal germ, organite, or ovule? What vitalizes it and gives it the power of assimilating the protoplasm as its food, without which the organism dies and disappears?

Giving the professor the fullest credit for exact science in all his statements, he does not, as far as we can see, prove his protoplasm is the physical basis of life, or that there is for life any physical basis at all. He only proves that matter is so far plastic as to afford sustenance to a generated organic life, which every farmer who has ever manured a field of corn or grass, or reared a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle, knows, and always has known, as well as the illustrious professor.

We can find a clear statement of several of the conditions of life, both vegetable and animal, but no demonstration of the principle of life, in the professor's very elaborate discourse. Indeed, if we examine it closely, we shall find that he does not even pretend to demonstrate anything of the sort. He denies all means of science except sensible experience, and maintains with Hume that we have no sensible experience of causes or principles, all science, he asserts, is restricted to empirical facts with their law, which, in his system, is itself only a fact or a classification of facts. The conditions of life, as we observe them, are for him the essential principle of life in the only sense in which the word principle has, or can have, for him, an intelligible meaning. He proves, then, the physical basis of life, by denying that it has any intelligible basis at all. He proves, indeed, that the protoplasm, which he shows, or endeavors to show, is universal—one and the same, always and everywhere —is present in the already existing life of both the plant and the animal; but that, whatever it be, in the plant or animal, which gives it the power to take up the protoplasm and assimilate it to its own organism, which is properly the life or vital power, he does not explain, account for, or even recognize. With him, power is an empty word. He nowhere proves that life is produced, furnished, or generated by the protoplasm, or has a material origin. Hence, the protoplasm, by his own showing, is simply no protoplasm at all. He proves, if anything, that in inorganic matter there are elements which the living plant or animal assimilates, and into which, when dead, it is resolved. This is all he does, and in fact, all he professes to do.

The professor makes light of the very grave objection, that chemical analysis can throw no light on the principle or basis of life, because it is or can be made only on the dead subject. He of course concedes that chemical analysis is not made on the living subject; but this, he contends, amounts to nothing. We think it amounts to a great deal. The very thing sought, to wit, life, is wanting in the dead subject, and of course cannot by any possible analysis be detected in it. If all that constituted the living subject is present in the dead body, why is the body dead, or why has it ceased to perform its vital functions? The protoplasm, or what you so call, is as present in the corpse as in the living organism. If it is the basis of life, why is the organism no longer living? The fact is, that life, while it continues, resists chemical action and death, by a higher and subtler chemistry of its own, and it is only the dead body that falls under the action of the ordinary chemical laws. There is, then, no concluding the principle or basis of life from any possible dissection of the dead body.

The professor's answer to the objection is far from being satisfactory.

"Objectors of this class," he says, "do not seem to reflect … that we know nothing about the composition of any body as it is. The statement that a crystal of calcspar consists of carbonate of lime is quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it therefore be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refinements and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that they behave similarly toward several reagents. To this complex combination, the nature of which has never been determined with exactness, the name of protein has been applied. And if we use this term with such caution as may properly arise out of comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may be truly said that all protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples of a nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all living matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases in, which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be effected by this agency increases every day. Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40 degrees—50 degrees centigrade, which has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kuhne's beautiful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all."

This long extract proves admirably how long, how learnedly, how scientifically, a great man can talk without saying anything. All that is here said amounts only to this: the conclusions obtained by the analysis of the dead body cannot be denied to be applicable to the living body, because we know nothing of the composition of any body organic or inorganic, as it is. Therefore all life has a physical basis! Take the whole extract, and all it tells you is, that we know nothing of the subject it professes to treat. "All the forms of protoplasm, which have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in very complex union." When chemically resolved into these four elements, is it protoplasm still? Can you by a chemical process reconvert them into protoplasm? No. Then what does the analysis show of the nature of your physical basis of life? "To this complex union, the nature of which has never yet been determined, the name of protein has been applied." Very important to know that. Yet this name protein names not something known, but something the nature of which is unknown. What then does it tell us? "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, it may truly be said that all protoplasm is proteinaceous." Be it so, what advance in knowledge, since we are ignorant of what protein is? It is wonderful what a magnificent structure our scientists are able to erect on ignorance as the foundation.

The professor, after having confessed his ignorance of what the alleged protoplasm really is, continues:

"Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be studied. But it will be understood that this general uniformity by no means excludes any amount of special modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one doubts that under all these protean changes it is one and the same thing. And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matter of life? Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the universe in molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know? Or is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated. Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life,

'Debemur morti nos nostraque,'

with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died."

Suppose all this to be precisely as asserted, it only proves that there is diffused through the whole material world elements which in certain unknown and inexplicable combinations, afford sustenance to plants, and through plants to animals, or from which the living organism repairs its waste and sustains its life. It does not tell us how carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are or must be combined to form the alleged protoplasm, whence is the living organism, nor the origin or principle of its life. It, in fact, shows us neither the origin nor the matter of life, for it is only an actually living organism that uses or assimilates the alleged protoplasm. There is evidently at work in the organism a vital force that is distinguishable from the irritability or contractility of the protoplasm, and not derived from or originated by it. Undoubtedly, every organism that falls under our observation, whether vegetable or animal, has its physical conditions, and lives by virtue of a physical law; but this, even when we have determined the law and ascertained the conditions, throws no light on the life itself. The life escapes all observation, and science is impotent, if it leaves out the creative act of God, to explain it, or to bring us a step nearer its secret. Professor Huxley tells us no more, with all his science and hard words, than any cultivator of the soil, any shepherd or herdsman, can tell us, and knows as well as he, as we have already said.

In the last extract, the professor evidently prefers, of the two alternatives he suggests, the one that asserts that "the matter of life [protoplasm] is composed of ordinary matter, is built up of ordinary matter, and resolved again into ordinary matter when its work is done." This the professor applies to man as well as to plants and animals. Hence, he cites the Roman poet,

"Debemur morti nos nostraque."

But we have conceded the professor more than he asks. We have conceded that all matter is, in a certain sense, plastic, and living, in the sense of being active, not passive. But the professor does not ask so much. We inferred from some things in the beginning of his discourse that he intended to maintain that his protoplasm is itself elemental, and pervading all nature. But this is not the case; he merely holds it to be a chemical compound formed by the peculiar chemical combination of lifeless components. Thus he says:

"But it will be observed that the existence of the matter of life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds, namely, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the world, and all vital phenomena come to an end. They are related to the protoplasm of the plant, as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together, under certain conditions they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in my secular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any of the others."

But here is a break or a bold leap from a lifeless to a living compound. No matter how different are the several chemical compounds known from the simple components, the new compound is always, as far as known, as lifeless as were the several components themselves. Hydrogen and oxygen compounded give rise to water, but water is lifeless. Hydrogen and nitrogen, brought together in certain proportions, give rise to ammonia, still a lifeless compound. No chemist has yet, by any combination of the minerals, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, the constituents of protoplasm, been able to produce a living plant or a living organism of any sort. How then conclude that their combination produces the matter of life, or gives rise to the living organism? There seems to us to be a great gulf between the premises and the conclusion. Certain combinations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen produce certain lifeless compounds different from themselves, therefore a certain other combination of these same elements produces the living organism, plant, or animal, or originates the matter, and forms the physical basis of life. If the professor had in his school days reasoned in this way, his logic-master, we suspect, would have set a black mark against his name, or, more likely, have rapped him over the knuckles, if not over his head, and told him that an argument that has no middle term, is no argument at all, and that "Transitio a genere ad genus," as from the lifeless to the living, is a sophism.

The professor is misled by his supposing that what is true of the dead body must be true of the living. Because chemical analysis resolves the dead body into certain lifeless elements, he concludes that the living body is, while living, only a compound of these same lifeless elements. That is, from what is true of death, he concludes what must be true of life. But for this fallacy, he could never have fallen into the other fallacy of concluding life is only the result of a certain aggregate or amalgam of lifeless minerals. Our scientists are seldom good logicians, and we have rarely found them able, when leaving traditional science, to draw even a logical induction from the facts before them. This is wherefore they receive so little respect from philosophers and theologians, who are always ready to accept their facts, but, for the most part, unable to accept their inductions. The professor has given us some valuable facts, though very well known before; but his logical ineptness is the best argument he has as yet offered in support of his favorite theory that man is only a monkey developed.

In the extract next before the last, the professor revives an old doctrine long since abandoned, that life is generated from corruption. "Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died." We know that some physiologists regard the waste of the body, which in life is constantly going on, and which is repaired by the food we take, as incipient death; but this is only because they confound the particles or molecules of matter of which the body is externally built up, and which change many times during an ordinary life, with the body itself, and suppose the life of the body is simply the resultant of the aggregation of these innumerable molecules or particles. But the life of the organism, we have seen, is within it, and its action from the centre, and it is only its life, not its death, that throws off or exudes as well as assimilates the material particles. The exudation as well as the assimilation is interrupted by death. Why the protoplasm could not live unless it died is what we do not understand.

The professor, of course, not only denies the immortality of the soul, but the existence of soul itself. There is for him no soul but the protoplasm formed of ordinary matter. All this we understand very well. We understand, too, that on his theory the protoplasm assimilated by the organism to repair its waste, renews literally, not figuratively, the life of the organism. But how he extracts life from death, and concludes that the protoplasm must die, as the condition of living, passeth our comprehension. We suppose, however, the professor found it necessary to assert it in order to be able to reason from the dead subject to the living. If the protoplasm were not dead, he could not by chemical analysis determine its constituents; and if the death of the protoplasm were not essential to its life, he could not conclude the constituents of the living protoplasm from what he finds to be the constituents of the dead protoplasm. But this does not help him. In the first place, the waste of the living organism is not death nor dying, though death may result from it. And the supply of protoplasm in the shape of food does not originate new life, nor replenish a life that is gone, but supplies what is needed to sustain and invigorate a life that is already life. In the second place, the vital force is not built up by protoplastic accretions, but operates from within the organism, from the organite or central cell, without which there could be no accretions or secretions. The food does not give life; it only ministers sustenance to an organism already living. No chemical analysis of the food can disclose or throw any light on the origin, nature, or constitution of the organic life itself.

It is this fact that prevents us from having much confidence in chemical physiology, which is still insisted on by our most eminent physiologists. In every organism there is something that transcends the reach of chemical analysis, and which no chemical synthesis can reproduce. Take the professor's protoplasm itself. He resolves it into the minerals, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen: but no chemist can by any possible recombination of them reproduce protoplasm. How then can one say that these minerals are its sole constituents, or that there are not other elements entering it which escape all chemical tests and, indeed, are not subject to chemical laws? Chemistry is limited, and cannot penetrate the essence of the material substance any more than the eye can. It never does and never can go beyond the sensible properties of matter. Life has its own laws, and every physiologist knows that he meets in the living organism phenomena or facts which it is impossible to reduce to any of the laws which are obtainable from the analysis of inorganic or lifeless matter. It is necessary then to conclude that there is in the living organism present and active some element which, though using lifeless matter, cannot be derived from it, or explained by physical laws, be they mechanical, chemical, or electrical. The law of life is a law sui generis, and not resolvable into any other. We must even go beyond the physical laws themselves, if we would find their principle.

As far as human science goes, there is, where the nucleus of life is wanting, no conversion of lifeless matter into living matter. The attempt to prove that living organisms, plants, animals, or man are developed from inorganic and lifeless matter, though made as long ago as Leucippus and Democritus, systematized by Epicurus, sung in rich Latin verse by Lucretius, and defended by the ablest of modern British physico-philosophers, Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Biology, has by the sane part of the human race in all times and everywhere been held to be foolish and absurd. It has no scientific basis, is supported by no known facts, and is simply an unfounded, at least, an unsupported hypothesis. Life to the scientist is an insolvable mystery. We know no explanation of this mystery or of anything else in the universe, unless we accept the creative act of God; for the origin and cause of nature are not in nature herself. We have no other explanation of the origin of living organisms or of the matter of life. God created plants, animals, and man, created them living organisms, male and female created he them, and thus gave them the power to propagate and multiply each its own kind, by natural generation. The scientist will of course smile superciliously at this old solution, insisted on by priests and accepted by the vulgar; but though not a scientist, we know enough of science to say from even a scientific point of view that there is no alternative: either this or no solution at all. The ablest men of ancient or modern times, when they reject it, only fall into endless sophisms and self-contradictions.

Professor Huxley admits none but material existences, concedes that the terms of his proposition are unquestionably materialistic, and yet denies that he is individually a materialist.

"It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed. But if, as I have endeavored to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting place between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life which is the source of other vital phenomena. Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if 'gross and brutal materialism' were the mildest phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And most undoubtedly the terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless, two things are certain: the one, that I hold the statement to be substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but on the contrary believe materialism to involve grave philosophical error."

If what he has been from the first endeavoring to prove, and here distinctly asserts, is not materialism and consequently by his own confession, "a grave philosophical error," we know not what would be. "This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of the materialistic philosophy," he says, further on, "I share with some of the most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted." His terminology is, then, better fitted to conceal his thought than to express it. He may repudiate this or that materialistic system; he may repudiate all philosophy, which he, of course does, yet not his terminology only, but his thought, as far as thought he has, is materialistic. Nothing can be more materialistic than the conception of life, sense, sentiment, affection, thought, reasoning, all the sensible, intellectual, and moral phenomena we are conscious of, as the product of the peculiar arrangement or combination of the molecules of the protoplasm, itself resolvable into the minerals, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

The scientific professor defends himself from materialism, by asserting that both materialism and spiritualism lie without the limits of human science, and by denying the necessity of a substance, whether spirit or matter, to underlie and sustain—we should say, produce—the phenomena, and the necessary relation of cause and effect, or that we do or can know things under any relation but that of juxtaposition in space and time. He falls back on the skepticism of Hume, and takes refuge behind his ignorance. He is too ignorant either to assert or to deny the existence of spirit, and though he may not be able to prove the phenomena in question are the product of material forces, nobody knows enough of the nature and essence of matter to say that they are not; and in fine, he in the first part of his discourse is only stating the direction in which physiology has for some time been moving. After all, what is the difference, or rather, what matters "the difference between the conception of life as the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion of an Archaeus governing and directing blind matter within each living body?"

But if matter lies out of the limits of science, and the professor is unable to say whether it exists or not, what right has he to call anything material, to speak of a material basis of life, or to represent life and its phenomena as the product of "a certain disposition of material molecules"? What, indeed, has he been laboring to prove through his whole discourse, but that the phenomena of life are the product of ordinary matter? After this, it will hardly answer to plead ignorance of the existence and properties of matter. If matter be relegated to the region of the unknowable, his whole thesis, terminology and all, must be banished with it, for it retains, and can retain, no meaning.

Nor will it answer for the professor to take refuge in Hume's skepticism, and say he is not a materialist, because he admits no necessary relation between cause and effect, or that there is within the limits of science, any power or force, or vis activa, which men in their ignorance call "cause," actually producing something which men call "effect." If he says this, what becomes of his thesis, that life and even mind are the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, or of "the peculiar combination of the molecules of the protoplasm"? If he denies the existence, or even the knowledge of causative, that is, productive force, his thesis has no meaning, and all his alleged proofs of a physical basis of the vital and mental phenomena must count for nothing. Every proof, every argument, presupposes the relation of cause and effect. When that relation is denied, and the two things are assumed to have with each other only the relation of juxtaposition, no proposition can be either proved or disproved. The professor, after having asserted and attempted to prove his materialistic thesis, cannot, without gross self-contradiction, plead the skepticism of Hume in his defence. If he holds with Hume, he should have kept his mouth shut, and never stated or attempted to prove his thesis.

Whether we are or are not able to prove that life, sense, and reason do not originate in the peculiar "combination of the molecules of the protoplasm," is nothing to the purpose. It is for the professor to prove that they do. He must not base his science on our ignorance, any more than on his own.

But our space is exhausted and we must close. Taken, as we have taken him, on what he must concede to be purely scientific ground, and brought to a strictly scientific test, the professor's thesis must be declared not proven, and to be destitute of all scientific value. We have met him on his own ground, and have urged no arguments against him drawn from religion or metaphysics; we have simply corrected one or two mistakes in his science, and assailed his inductions with pure logic. If he has not reasoned logically, that is his fault, not ours, and neither he nor his friends have any right to complain of us for showing that his inductions are illogical, and therefore unscientific. Yet we are bound to say that the professor reasons as well as any of his class of scientists that we have met with. No man can reason logically who rejects the , that is, logic itself, and nothing better than Professor Huxley's discourse can be expected from a scientist who discards all causes and seeks to explain the existence and phenomena or facts of the universe, without rising from second causes to the first and final cause of all.

Two questions are raised by this discourse, of great and vital importance. The one as to the nexus between cause and effect, in answer to Hume's skepticism, and the other as to spirit and matter, and their reciprocal relation. We have not attempted the discussion of either in this article; but should a favorable occasion offer, we may hereafter treat them both at some length.