Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, and
nitrogenous salts disappear, and in their place, under the influence of
pre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of
life makes its appearance?
It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties of the
components and the properties of the resultant, but neither was there in
the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as
the influence of pre-existing living matter is something quite
unintelligible; but does anybody quite comprehend the modus operandi
[106] of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and
hydrogen?
What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existence
in the living matter of a something which has no representative, or
correlative, in the not living matter which gave rise to it? What better
philosophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And why should
"vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which have
disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus [107] accounted for the operation
of the meat-jack [108] by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and
scorned the "materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit
by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney.
If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant
signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we are
logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of life,
the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere.
Pages:
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176