*' vital force " or " mind " to account for this difference, any rjiore than tlie pecuhar properties of water justify the assumption of the existence of anything distinct from its material element. Vitality and mind, we are told, have no better philosophical status than aquosity.
Dr. Stirling^ states the case thus : "If it is by its mere chemi- cal and physical structure that water exhibits certain properties called aqueous, it is also by its mere chemical and physical struC' tare 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 preexistent protoplasm is not more imintelligible 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." This analogy is tvvo-fold ; having refer- ence to chemical composition on the one hand, and to the anteced- ent stimulus wliicii determines it on the other. " 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 it 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 preexisting protoplasm in the other."
In answer to this argument Dr. Stirling goes on to show that the analogy holds only as to chemical and physical properties. " 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 pi'otoplasm, is a possession in excess ; and with relation to that excess there can be no grounds for analogy." "• Living pro-
1 As Regards Protoplasm in Relation to Professor nxixley's Essay on the Physical Basis of life, by James Hutchison Stirling, F. R. C. S., LL. D. Edinburgh, Rlackwood & Sons. Republished as one of the Yale University series, p. 39. This is considered to be the best refutation of the theory of the correlation of physical and vital force.
288 PART I — THEOLOGY. [Ch. III. - Aitti-Theism.
toplasm, namel}'-, is identical with dead protoplasm," says Dr. Stir- ling, " onlj so far as its chemistry is concerned (if even so much as that) ; and it is quite evident, consequently, that difference be- tAveen the two cannot depend on that in which they are identical — cannot depend on the chemistry. Life, then, is no affair of chem- ical and physical structure, and must find its explanation in some- thing else. It is thus that, lifted high enough, the light of the analogy between water and protoplasm is seen to go out." ^ Water and its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, are as to the Mnd of power which they exhibit on a 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 — anew and higher world, the world of a self-realizing thought, the world of an en- telechyr ^ " 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 ahve. That relation is not an analogy but an antitliesis, the antithesis of antitheses. In it, in fact, we are in the presence of the one incommunicable gulf — the gulf of all gulfs — that gulf which Mr. Huxley's pi'otoplasm 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 be- tween 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 Ger- mans 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 immate- rial force, and they ascribe the processes exhibited by protoplasm — in so many words — not to the molecules, but to organization and life."*
"Was it molecular powers that invented a respiration — that perforated the posterior eixr to give a balance of air ; that compen- sated the fenestra ovalis by a fenestra rotunda; that placed in the auricular sacs those otolitlies, tliose express stones for hearing? Such machinery ! The cho?'dce tendinece are, to the valves of the heart, exactly adjusted check-strings ; and the contractile eolumnce
1 As Regards Protoplasm, etc., pp. 41, 42. 2 Jbid. p. 42. » Tb'id. p. 42. ^ ilnd. p. 43.
§4, F.l IMATERTALISM. ITS EEFUTATION. 289
carnece are set in, under contraction and expansion, to equalize their length to their office Are we to conceive such ma- chinery, sucii apparatus, such contrivances, merely molecular ? Are molecules adequate to such things — molecules in their blind passivity, and dead, dull, insensibility ? . . . . 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 hydro- gen 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." ^ There is, there- fore, something in protoplasm which cannot be weighed or other- wise measured, and to which the vital phenomena are to be re- ferred.
If then the argument from analogy fails in its application to vital phenomena, there can be no pretence that it is valid in its application to the phenomena of mind. If we refuse to take the first step, even Professor Huxley cannot require us to take those which follow.
Further Arguments of the Materialists.
Besides the analogical argument. Materialists insist that there is direct evidence of the correlation of physical, with vital, and men- tal force. Let it be remembered what this means. Correlated forces are such as may be converted, the one into the other, and which are consequently in their nature identical. The thing, therefore, in this case, to be proved is that light, heat, etc., can be changed into life and thought, and that the latter are identical with tiie former, both classes being resolvable inlo motion of the molecules of matter.
The proof is substantially this. The animal body generates heat by the combustion of the carbon of the food which it receives, precisely as heat is produced by the combustion of carbon out of the body. And it has been experimentally proved that the quantity of heat produced in the body, is precisely the same, due allowances being made, as the same amount of carbon Svould pro- duce if burnt out of the body. Vital heat, therefore, is identical with physical heat.
1 As regards Protoplasm, etc., pp. 47, 48.
290 PART I — THEOLOGY. [Ch. HI. — Axti-Theism
Again, muscular force is produced precisely in the same way as phj'sical force. The potential energy of the fuel moves the steam- engine. Its work or power is measured and determined b}'' the amount of power stored in the wood or coal consumed in its pro- duction. The source and measure of muscular power, are in like manner to be found in the food- we eat. Its potential energy, derived from the sun as is the case with the potential energy of wood and coal, when liberated, produces its due amount, so much and no more, of muscular power. Muscular power, therefore, is as purely physical, produced in the same way, and measured by the same standard, as the power of the steam-engine.