they are composed.” That, doubtless, is true, we say; but such statements do not exhaust the facts. We call water hydrogen and oxygen, and attribute _its_ properties to the properties of them. In a chemical point of view, we ought to do the same thing for ice and steam; yet, for all the chemical identity, water is not ice, nor is either steam. Do we, then, in these cases, make nothing of the _difference_, and in its despite enjoy the satisfaction of viewing the three as one? Not so; we ask a reason for the difference; we demand an antecedent that shall render the consequent intelligible. The chemistry of oxygen and hydrogen is not enough in explanation of the threefold form; and by the very necessity of the facts we are driven to the addition of heat. It is precisely so with protoplasm in its twofold form. The chemistry remaining the same in each (if it really does so), we are compelled to seek elsewhere a reason for the difference of living from dead protoplasm. As the differences of ice and steam from water lay not in the hydrogen and oxygen, but in the heat, so the difference of living from dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization. In all cases, for the new quality, plainly, we must have a new explanation. The qualities of a steam-engine are not the results of its simple chemistry. We do apply to protoplasm the same conceptions, then, that are legitimate elsewhere, and in allocating properties and explaining phenomena we simply insist on Mr. Huxley’s own distinction of “living or dead.” That, in fact, is to us the distinction of distinctions, and we admit no vital action whatever, not even the dullest, to be the result of the _molecular_ action of the protoplasm that displays it. The very protoplasm of the nettle-sting, with which Mr. Huxley begins, is already vitally organized, and in that organization as much superior to its own molecules as the steam-engine, in its mechanism, to its own wood and iron. It were indeed as rational to say that there is no principle concerned in a steam-engine or a watch but that of its molecular forces, as to make this assertion of organized matter. Still there are degrees in organization, and the highest forms of life are widely different from the lowest. Degrees similar we see even in the inorganic world. The persistent flow of a river is, to the mighty reason of the solar system, in some such proportion, perhaps, as the rhizopod to man. In protoplasm, even the lowest, then, but much more conspicuously in the highest, there is, in addition to the molecular force, another force unsignalized by Mr. Huxley—the force of vital organization.