As regards protoplasm in relation to Professor Huxley's essay On the physical basis of life / by James Hutchinson Stirling.

  • Stirling James Hutchison, 1820-1909.
Date:
1869
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: As regards protoplasm in relation to Professor Huxley's essay On the physical basis of life / by James Hutchinson Stirling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    so much hydrogen and oxygen, into which we discharge an electric spark, and water is the result. iSow wliat analogy is it possible to perceive between this production of water by external experiment and the production off protoplasm by j^rotoplasm 1 The discrepancy is so palp- able that it were impertinent to enlarge on it. The truthi fi is just this, that the measured and mixed gases, the ves- sel, and the spark, in the one case, are as unlike the for- tuitous food, the living organs, and the long process of assimilation in the other case, as the product water is; unlike the product protoplasm. Xo ; that the action ol the electric spark should be unkuomi, is no reason why wc should not insist ou protoplasm for protoplasm, on life foj life. Protoplasm can only be produced by protoplasm and each of all the innumerable varieties of prot-oj^lasm: k only by its oM-n kind. For the protoplasm of the wiinr Ave must go to the worm, and for that of the toad-stoo to the toad-stool. In fact, if all living beings come from iti, protoplasm, it is quite as certain that, but for living beingg let protoplasm would disai)iiear. Without an egg you car not have a hen—that is true ; but it is equally tru that, Avithout a hen, you cannot have an egg. So i protoplasm ; whicli, ccmsoquently. in iho productia |. of itself, oilers no analogy to the production, or pw cipitation by tlio electric spark, not of itself, but * A\'atcr. Besides, if for ])rotoplasm, prc-oxisting prot< t- plasm, is always necessary, how was there over a tir proto|)lasiu ? (leiieially, then, Mr Huxley's analogy does not hoi Avliether in the one reference or tlie other, and K Huxley has no warrant for the reduction of profc ^ plasui to the mere chemical level which he as.sigii