world, on its side of the incommunicable cleft, as complete, entire, independent, self-contained, and absolutely _sui generis_, as the world of matter on the other side. It will be sufficient here to allude to as much as this, with special reference to the fact that, so far as this argument is concerned, protoplasm has not introduced any the very slightest difference. All the ancient reasons for the independence of thought as against organization, can be used with even more striking effect as against protoplasm; but it will be sufficient to indicate this, so much are the arguments in question a common property now. Thought, in fact, brings with it its own warrant; or it brings with it, to use the phrase of Burns, “its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.” And that is the strongest argument on this whole side. Throughout the entire universe, organic and inorganic, thought is the controlling sovereign; nor does matter anywhere refuse its allegiance. So it is in thought, too, that man has _his_ patent of nobility, believes that he is created in the image of God, and knows himself a free-man of infinitude. But the analogy, in the hands of Mr. Huxley, has, we have seen, a second reference—that, namely, to the excitants, if we may call them so, which _determine_ combination. The _modus operandi_, Mr. Huxley tells us, of preëxisting protoplasm in determining the formation of new protoplasm, is not more unintelligible than the _modus operandi_ of the electric spark in determining the formation of water; and so both, we are left to infer, are perfectly analogous. The inferential turn here is rather a favorite with Mr. Huxley. “But objectors of this class,” he says on an earlier occasion, in allusion to those who hesitate to conclude from dead to living matter, “do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is.” In the same neighborhood, too, he argues that, though impotent to restore to decomposed calc-spar its original form, we do not hesitate to accept the chemical analysis assigned to it, and should not, consequently, any more hesitate because of any mere difference of form to accept the analysis of dead for that of living protoplasm. It is certainly fair to point out that, if we bear ignorance and impotence with equanimity in one case, we may equally so bear them in another; but it is not fair to convert ignorance into knowledge, nor impotence into power. Yet it is usual to take such statements loosely, and let them pass. It is not considered that, if we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is, then we do know nothing, and that it is strangely idle to offer absolute ignorance as a support for the most dogmatic knowledge. If such statements are, as is really expected for them, to be accepted, yet not accepted, they are the stultification of all logic. Is the chemistry of living to be seen to be