aterialism. It turned out, however,
that the public regarded it as an argument in favor of Materialism. This
we think was a very natural, if not an unavoidable mistake, on the part
of the public. For in that Essay, he says that Protoplasm, or the
physical basis of life, "is a kind of matter common to all living
beings, that the powers or faculties of all kinds of living matter,
diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially of the same kind."
Protoplasm as far as examined contains the four elements,--carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These are lifeless bodies, "but when
brought together under certain conditions, they give rise to the still
more complex body Protoplasm; and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena
of life." There is no more reason, he teaches, for assuming the
existence of a mysterious something called vitality to account for vital
phenomena, than there is for the assumption of something called Aquasity
to account for the phenomena of water. Life is said to be "the product
of a certain disposition of material molecules." The matter of life is
"composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in
which its atoms are aggregated. I take it," he says, "to be demonstrable
that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be
the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that human logic is
equally incompetent to prove that any act is really spontaneous. A
really spontaneous act is one, which, by the assumption, has no cause;
and the attempt to prove such a negative as this, is on the face of the
matter absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility to
demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material
cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit
that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means,
the extension of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant
gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call
spirit and spontaneity."

[20] It cannot escape the attention of any one that Mr. Darwin, Mr.
Wallace, Professor Huxley, and all the other advocates or defenders of
Darwinism, do not pretend to prove anything more than that species _may_
be originated by selection, not that there is no other satisfactory
account of their origin. Mr. Darwin admits that referring them to the
intention and efficiency of God, accounts for everything, but, he says,
that is no