things—molecules in their blind passivity, and dead, dull insensibility? Is it to molecular agency Mr. Huxley himself owes that “singular inward laboratory” of which he speaks, and without which all the protoplasm in the world would be useless to him? Surely, in the presence of these manifest ideas, it is impossible to attribute the single peculiar feature of protoplasm—its vitality, namely—to mere molecular chemistry. Protoplasm, it is true, breaks up into carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, as water does into hydrogen and oxygen; but the watch breaks similarly up into mere brass, and steel, and glass. The loose materials of the watch—even its chemical material if you will—replace its weight, quite as accurately as the constituents carbon, etc., replace the weight of the protoplasm. But neither these nor those replace the vanished idea, which was alone the important element. Mr. Huxley saw no break in the series of steps in molecular complication; but, though not molecular, it is difficult to understand what more striding, what more absolute break could be desired than the break into an idea. It is of that break alone that we think in the watch; and it is of that break alone that we should think in the protoplasm which, far more cunningly, far more rationally, constructs a heart, an eye or an ear. That is the break of breaks, and explain it as we may, we shall never explain it by molecules. But, if inorganic elements as such are inadequate to account either for vital organization or the objective idea of design, much more are they inadequate, in the third place, to account for the subjective idea, for the phenomena of thought as thought. Yet Mr. Huxley tells us that thought is but the expression of the molecular changes of protoplasm. This he only tells us; this he does not prove. He merely says that, if we admit the functions of the lowest forms of life to be but “direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed,” we must admit as much for the functions of the highest. We have not admitted Mr. Huxley’s presupposition; but, even with its admission, we should not feel bound to admit his conclusion. In such a mighty system of differences, there are ample room and verge enough for the introduction of new motives. We can say here at once, in fact, that as thought, let its connection be what it may with, has never been proved to result from, organization, no improvement of the proof required will be found in protoplasm. No one power that Mr. Huxley signalizes in protoplasm can account for thought: not alimentation, and not reproduction, certainly; but not even contractility. We have seen already that there is no proof of contraction being necessary even for the simplest sensation; but much less is there any proof of a necessity of contraction for the inner and independent operations of the mind. Mr. Huxley himself admits this. He says: “Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the