t my
valued friend Professor Stricker gives a somewhat different statement
about protoplasm. But why in the world did not this distinguished
Hegelian look at a nettle hair for himself, before venturing to
speak about the matter at all? Why trouble himself about what either
Stricker or I say, when any tyro can see the facts for himself, if he
is provided with those not rare articles, a nettle and a microscope?
But I suppose this would have been "_Aufklaerung_"--a recurrence to the
base common-sense philosophy of the eighteenth century, which liked
to see before it believed, and to understand before it criticised. Dr.
Stirling winds up his paper with the following paragraph:--

[Footnote 1: Subsequently published under the title of "As regards
Protoplasm."]

"In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, (1) that all
organisms consist alike of the same life-matter, (2) which
life-matter is, for its part, due only to chemistry, must be
pronounced untenable--nor less untenable (3) the materialism
he would found on it."

The paragraph contains three distinct assertions concerning my views,
and just the same number of utter misrepresentations of them. That
which I have numbered (1) turns on the ambiguity of the word "same,"
for a discussion of which I would refer Dr. Stirling to a great hero
of "_Aufklaerung_", Archbishop Whately; statement number (2) is, in my
judgment, absurd, and certainly I have never said anything resembling
it; while, as to number (3), one great object of my essay was to show
that what is called "materialism," has no sound philosophical basis!

As we have seen, the study of yeast has led investigators face to face
with problems of immense interest in pure chemistry, and in animal and
vegetable morphology. Its physiology is not less rich in subjects for
inquiry. Take, for example, the singular fact that yeast will increase
indefinitely when grown in the dark, in water containing only tartrate
of ammonia, a small percentage of mineral salts, and sugar. Out of
these materials the _Torulae_ will manufacture nitrogenous protoplasm,
cellulose, and fatty matters, in any quantity, although they are
wholly deprived of those rays of the sun, the influence of which is
essential to the growth of ordinary plants. There has been a great
deal of speculation lately, as to how the living organisms buried
beneath two or three thousand fathoms of water, and therefore in all
probability almost depriv