to result from the
nature and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no
intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of
protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules.

But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you are
placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's
estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of
heaven. 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 endeavoured 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 that matter
of life which is the source of our other vital phaenomena.[109]

ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS [110]

The marine productions which are commonly known by the names of "Corals"
and "Corallines," were thought by the ancients to be sea-weeds, which
had the singular property of becoming hard and solid, when they were
fished up from their native depths and came into contact with the air.

"Sic et curalium, quo primum contigit auras Tempore durescit: mollis
fuit herba sub undis,"[111]

says Ovid (Metam. xv); and it was not until the seventeenth century that
Boccone [112] was emboldened, by personal experience of the facts, to
declare that the holders of this belief were no better than "idiots,"
who had been misled by the softness of the outer coat of the living red
coral to imagine that it was soft all through.

Messer Boccone's strong epithet is probably undeserved, as the notion he
controverts, in all likelihood, arose merely from the misinterpretation
of the strictly true statement which any coral fisherman would make to
a curious inquirer; namely, that the outside coat of the red coral is
quite soft when it is taken out of the sea. At any rate, he did good
service by eliminati