igible
ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from
the nature and disposition of its molecules.

But I bid you beware lest, 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 are the properties of its protoplasm, and are the direct results
of the nature of the matter of which it is composed. But if, as I have
endeavored to prove to you, its 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 phenomena.

Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the
propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public
comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and
perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if
"gross and brutal materialism" were the mildest phrase applied to them in
certain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the propositions are
distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things are certain: the one,
that I hold the statements to be substantially true; the other, that I,
individually, am no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism
to involve grave philosophical error.

This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of
materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men with
whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the present
discourse, it appeared to me to be fitting opportunity to explain how such
a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound logic. I
purposed to lead you through the territory of vital phenomena to the
materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now plunged, and then to
point out to you the sole path by which, in my judgment, extrication is