mploy the names of "electricity"
and "electrical force" to denote others; but it ceases to do so, if such
a name implies the absurd assumption that either "electricity" or
"vitality" is an entity, playing the part of a sufficient cause of
electrical or vital phenomena. A mass of living protoplasm is simply a
machine of great complexity, the total result of the work of which, or
its vital phenomena, depend on the one hand upon its construction, and
on the other upon the energy supplied to it; and to speak of "vitality"
as anything but the names of a series of operations is as if one should
talk of the "horologity" of a clock.[9]

When hydrogen and oxygen are united by an electrical spark water is
produced; certainly there is no parity between the liquid produced and
the two gases. At 32 deg. F., oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous
bodies, whose particles tend to fly away from one another; water at the
same temperature is a strong though brittle solid. Such changes are
called the properties of water. It is not assumed that a certain
something called "acquosity" has entered into and taken possession of
the oxide of hydrogen as soon as formed, and then guarded the particles
in the facets of the crystal or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost.
On the contrary, it is hoped molecular physics will in time explain the
phenomena. "What better philosophical status," says Huxley,[10] "has
vitality than acquosity. If the properties of water may be properly said
to result from the nature and disposition of its 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."

"To distinguish the living from the dead body," Herbert Spencer says,
"the tree that puts out leaves when the spring brings change of
temperature, the flower which opens and closes with the rising and
setting of the sun, the plant that droops when the soil is dry and
re-erects itself when watered, are considered alive because of these
produced changes; in common with the zoophyte, which contracts on the
passing of a cloud over the sun, the worm that comes to the ground when
continually shaken, and the hedgehog which rolls itself up when
attacked."

"Seeds of wheat produced antecedent to the Pharaohs," says Bastain,[11]
"remaining in Egyptian catacombs through century after century display
of course no vital manifestations, but nevertheless retain the
potentiality