and still very
imperfect knowledge of chemistry, that we were unable artificially to
make up protoplasm.

[Footnote 1: Nicholson ("Zoology," p. 4) gives for Albumen, which is
nearly identical with protoplasm--Carbon, 144; Hydrogen, 110; Nitrogen,
18; Oxygen, 42; Sulphur, 2. These figures nearly equal those in the
text, being those figures multiplied each by 4 (approximately) and
without the trace of sulphur.]

And of course there is no answer to a supposition of this sort.
Nevertheless there is no sort of reason to believe that protoplasm will
ever be made; nor, if we could succeed in uniting the elements into a
form resembling protoplasmic jelly, is there the least reason to suppose
that such a composition would exhibit the irritability, or the powers of
nutrition and reproduction, which are essentially the characteristics of
_living_ protoplasm. It is not too much to say that, after the close of
the controversy about spontaneous generation, it is now a universally
admitted principle of science that life can only proceed from life--the
old _omne vivum ex ovo_ in a modern form.[1]

But here the same sort of argument that was brought forward regarding
the possibility of matter and its laws being self-caused, comes in as
regards life.

[Footnote 1: _See_ "Critiques and Addresses," T.H. Huxley, F.R.S.,
p. 239. So much is this the case, that it is really superfluous, however
interesting, to recall the experiments of Dr. Tyndall and others, which
finally demonstrated that wherever primal animal forms, bacteria and
other, "microbes," were produced in infusions of hay, turnip, &c.,
apparently boiled and sterilized and then hermetically sealed, there
were really germs in the air enclosed in the vessel, or germs that in
one form or another were not destroyed by the boiling or heating. Dr.
Bastian's argument for spontaneous generation is thus completely
overthrown. _(See_ Drummond, "Natural Law," pp. 62-63.)]

The argument in the most direct form was made use of by Professor
Huxley, but it is difficult to believe that so powerful a thinker could
seriously hold to a view which will not bear examination, however neatly
and brilliantly it may go off when first launched into the air. The
argument is that life can only be regarded as a further property of
certain forms of matter. Oxygen and hydrogen, when they combine, result
in a new substance, quite unlike either of them in character, and
possessing _new_ and different pr