Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1870-06-01

place his lamp and project upon the screen a
magnifed picture of all the molecular agita-
tions going on inside that imperial skull.
Then throw in Professor Pierce, or the
cunningest mathematician Europe or Ameri-
ca can produce, and let him compute and
formulate the pulsing and whirling Oscilla-
tions in exactest terms of time and space.
Will you, man of science, gravely assert
absolute identity of the wrggling screen
picture and the tragedy of q" Hamlet , .? Do
| you regard it n matter of little moment
whether you express the sOliloquy on suicide
| in terms of vibration or the terms of vibra-
tion in the soliloquy on suicide? Would
you be willing to have your edition OF the
great dramatist printed for you in formula
i of molecular motions?
We have heard great deal of late about
! Protoplasm, and Professor Huxley's lecture
on Protoplasm as the Physical Basis OF Life .
| The lecture is written with the glowing en-
| htusiasm of the herald of a marvellous dis
covery, which is fairly to take away the
| breath of the uninitisted. What is the
astounding fact We are, in this paper, called
s...n % give ia 20. &c is that there is one
KIND OF matter common to all living things ;
that as all the buildings in a city. whether
novels. warehouses, palaces or may be built
OF brick, and of the same kind of brick so all
/ living existences, from the lowest animalcule
to Shakespeare, are built of one and the same
substance. Different as look ' the flower a
| girl wears in her hair and the blood which
courses in her youthful veins; - different as
] look the dense and resisting mass of the
oak, the strcng fabric of the tortoise, and
those broad disks of Jelly which may be seen
pulsatlDg through the waters of a calm sea. b.
but which drain away to mere films in the
hand which raises them out of their ele-
ment;" yet, in substance or material com
position a hidden bond connects them. They
are made alike out of prOtOplasm.
And what Is this protOplasm? An ele-
mentary life-stuf, a form of matter composed
of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
hen these four elements are brought to-
gether under certain conditions they give
rise to the still more complex body, proto-
plasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phe-
nomena of life" 1t as alive, and contains,
as inherent properties, the powers of con-
tractility, alimentation, growth, and repro
duetion-the only properties of any and all
living things, whether they be cell l-plants,
oaks, star-hsh, horses, or men. Now, if the
phenomena exhibited by water are its prop
critics, go are those presented by protoplasm,
living or dead, its properties" And, " if
the properties of water may be properly said
to result from the nature and disposition of
it's prominent molecules, can find no intel
ligible ground for refusing TO say that the
nature and disposition of its molecules"
There is no justification, then, for assuming
the existence of anything in the living mat
ter that was not represented in the nOn-liv-
ing elements which gave rise to 1t, any more
than there is of as uming the existence in
water of anything that was not before in the
hydrogen and oxygen of which il is composed.
Water differs, indeed, in properties, from
oxygen and hydrogen, and pTotOplasm from
the four elements of which it is composed.
But this is Just what might be expected
The hypothesis of an added something, called
- vitality stands in the same category of
absurdity with 4" the inherent meat-roasting
quality by which Martimus Scriblerus
accounted for the operation of the meat-jack
And the scornful fling of - materialism - at
those who reject vitality, is on a par with
the same fling at those who explained the
tesfing o the spit BY y certain mechanical
worked by the draught of the chimney.
30 far for Professor Huxley's statement OF
the community in substance that unites all
the varieties of life. But this is not all.
community in form and faculty also unites
all living things, " from the brightly-colored
lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere
mineral incrustation of the bare rock on
which it grows, 10 the painter to whom it is
instinct with beauty, or the bctauist whom
it feeds with knowledge" This may seem
startling at first, but Professor Huxley pro-
poses to demonstrate its truth. And, first.
of the pOtoerS or facuLties of all living exist
ences. What are they, to take those of man
as the highest example? Has not Goethe
condensed a survey of them all in the famous
epigram,-
"warum treibt sch das volk so, und schreit?
rs will sich ernahren,
Kinder zeugen, und die nahren gut es vermag
Weiter bringt es klein Mensch, stelr er sich vie
auch WILT
These iaculties are, contractilitv, alimen-
tation, growth, reproduction. And here, at
once, We have the identification of them all
in protOplasm. This may not seem satisfac
tory at first to one " bo calls to mind New
ton or a Kant, who beget no children, but
spend their powers in discovering the sub
lime order of the heavens OF in unveiling the
still more sublime order of the human mind.
But the failure to marry and procreate may
be regarded as a mere matter of accident.
In the chief characteristics, however, of the
men, in what we call their stupendOus men
tai growth and mental activity. we have only
highly differentiated forms Of Authorization
and contractility. So many extremely mo-
bile vibrations stand for the a. Principia Of
Newton and the " Critique of the Pure
Reason - of Kant. So much assimilation
stands for the colossal knowledge of each.
The motives, too, to mental action, the ardor,
iron industry, intuitive insight, which char
acterized the men, these are still only phe-
nomena of contractility, contractility greater
and more diverse in degree, but not in Kind,
from that of the jelly-ish " All vital ac-
tion,' says Professor Huxley. is . 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 came extent,
that the thoughts to which am now giving
utteranee. and your thoughts regarding them,
are the expression of the molecular changes
of that matter of life which is the source of
our other vital phenomena. ~" Even those
manifestatons OF intellect, Of feeling, aud
Of viii, which we rightly name the higher
faculties, are not excluded from this classif-
cation, inasmuch as to every one but the
subject OF them, they are known only as
transitory changes in the relative positions
OF parts OF the body. Speech, gesture, and
every other form of human action, are, in
the long run, resolvable into muscular con-
traction, and muscular contraction is but a
transitory change in the relative position of
the parts of muscle.'' So, we see the
Rants and Newtons are not overlooked, as
might at nrst appear. on hasty glance at
the all-comprehensive epigram.
The powers or faculties thus disposed of.
the same absolute unity is, according to
Professor Huxley, predicable of the form or
structure OF all the infinitely varied types of
tio' ho"e'er complicated, tney are at bot
tom but SO many multiples of units of nu-
cieated or unnucleated protoplasm, variously
modified Woody fibre, sapduct, grain of
pollen, petal of flower; blood of OK, bone of
whale, hair of goat, heart, lung, brain of
man; every organ of plant or animal was
once no more than an aggregation of small,
coloriess corpuscles of this primitive life
stuff. In the adult reasoning man, alike as
in the jelly-like egg in which he originates,
g all that lives, and every part of all that
lives, are but nucleated or unnucIeated
mo0lhed or unmodifed protoplasm.'' Pro-