Intelligence.

Life.

Quotation from Huxley.

altogether transcends organic life and sensation.1 A full discussion of the grounds of this belief, and of its results, would be out of place in this work; I intend to endeavour to do justice to the subject in a future one.

With respect to organizing intelligence and mental intelligence, the most important chapters of this work consist of an attempt to prove that they are not capable of being resolved into any unintelligent agencies. It would be needless to recapitulate my reasonings on the subject here.

But with respect to life, I have somewhat more to say. In the chapter on the Chemistry of Life, I have stated my belief that "life, like matter and energy, had its origin in no secondary cause, but in the direct action of creative power;"2 giving as my principal reason that no merely chemical force appears to be capable of vitalizing matter: matter can be vitalized, and living beings can be produced, only by beings which are already alive; and no science appears to be able to bring us to the origin of life, any more than to the origin of matter.

Since the first volume of this work has been printed, Professor Huxley has published the opposite opinion to mine, in an article "On the Physical Basis of Life." 3 In a question of this sort, I must request the reader not to permit Huxley's high authority to influence his conclusion, but to weigh my reasoning against his.

I quote Huxley's words, italicising some of them :— "When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of water equal to the sum of their weights appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32° Fahr. and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water at the same temperature is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless, we call these and many other strange phenomena the properties of the water; and we do not hesitate to believe 2 Vol. I. p. 89.

1 See Chapter XXII.

3 Fortnightly Review, February 1869.

that in some way or another they result from the properties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume that a something called 'aquosity' entered into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their places in the facets of the crystal or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in the faith that by the advance of molecular physics we shall by and by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together. Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, and ammonia 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 matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any one quite comprehend the modus operandi 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?""

This reasoning, on a first perusal, looks lucid and convincing ; but I think a thorough examination will show that its apparent lucidity is produced by leaving out the difficulties of the question.

to it.

The analogy of a watch really makes against Huxley's argu- My reply ment. It is true that we are "able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts, and the manner in which they are put together;" and it may be true, for anything I have to say to the contrary, that if we understood an organism as well as we understand a watch, and if we understood life as well as we understand mechanics, we should be able to deduce the properties of living beings from those of carbonic acid, water, and ammonia. But here, where Huxley takes a parallelism for granted, there is really a wide divergence; for the living matter, which is chiefly formed of combinations of

carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, has the power of organizing itself; and in order to make the parallel a valid one, the brass and steel that compose the watch ought to have the power of putting themselves together, which they have not. If, then, the case of an organism is really analogous to that of a watch, a being who understood an organism as well as we understand a watch would be able to perceive that it has been organized by a power-namely life or intelligence-which is as totally unlike the properties of the mere chemical elements as the skill of the watchmaker is unlike the properties of brass and steel.

Huxley's argument about "aquosity" is less easy to answer. But I think the suggested analogy between the effect of the electric spark in producing water out of its elements, and the effect of "pre-existing living protoplasm" in vitalizing the substances of the food, is altogether unsound. The only effect of the electric spark in the formation of water is probably to produce heat, and the effect of heat is to enable the constituents of the water to combine according to their spontaneous affinities; but when the substance of food is vitalized by the action of previously vitalized matter, or when vitalized matter assumes organic structure, I see no proof nor probability that this is due to any spontaneous tendency of matter.

THE END.

LONDON R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

16, BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON.

April, 1870.

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HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, and TRAVELS. Baker (Sir Samuel W.).—THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF ABYSSINIA, and the Sword Hunters of the Hamran Arabs. By SIR SAMUEL W. Baker, M.A., F. R. G. S. With Portraits, Maps, and Illustrations. Third Edition, 8vo. 21s.

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Baker (Sir Samuel W.) (continued) —

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