remedy for materialism but what lies in the expression that, while he knows not what matter is in itself, he certainly knows that casualty is but contingent succession; and thus, like the so-called “philosophy” of the Revulsion, Mr. Huxley would only mock us into the intensest dogmatism on the one side by a fallacious reference to the intensest scepticism on the other. The present paper, then, will regard mainly Mr. Huxley’s argument _for_ materialism, but say what is required, at the same time, on his alleged argument—which is merely the imaginary, or imaginative, impregnation of ignorance—_against_ it. Following Mr. Huxley’s own steps in his essay, the course of his positions will be found to run, in summary, thus:— What is meant by the physical basis of life is, that there is one kind of matter common to all living beings, and it is named protoplasm. No doubt it may appear at first sight that, in the various kinds of living beings, we have only _difference_ before us, as in the lichen on the rock and the painter that paints it,—the microscopic animalcule or fungus and the Finner whale or Indian fig,—the flower in the hair of a girl and the blood in her veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and all other diversities, there really exists a threefold _unity_—a unity of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance. On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty, power, the action exhibited, there are but three categories of _human_ activity—contractility, alimentation, and reproduction; and there are no fewer for the _lower_ forms of life, whether animal or vegetable. In the nettle, for instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined by a granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of contractility. But in this respect—that is, in the possession of contractile substance—other plants are as the nettle, and all animals are as plants. Protoplasm—for the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm—is common to the whole of them. The difference, in short between the powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of the highest is one only of degree and not of kind. But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form, or manifested external appearance and structure. Not the sting only, but the whole nettle, is made up of protoplasm; and of all the other vegetables the nettle is but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with the protoplasm of the nettle; and both he and they consisted at first only of an aggregation of such. Protoplasm is the common constituent—the common origin. At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all that lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified or unmodified, protoplasm.