But this reduction of matter, as we know it, to a simpler but still highly differentiated condition, only causes reason the more earnestly to demand how the rhythmic and complex method, which we express by the word ‘law,’ came into operation, and was established for ever. The ‘protyle’ is infinitely more complex than the atoms of the homogeneous nebula. It makes no philosophical difference whether the ultimate atoms of the bodies known as elementary are all alike, or in each instance special. In either case there is infinitely more in the matter they severally make, than can be deduced from motion affecting the primitive atoms. But not only have we by the formula and constructive method of this philosophy to obtain protyle from the mere effects of motion on primitive atoms; but, by the same means alone, we have to change protyle into the seventy ‘elements;’ above all, without an added factor or a change in the method, we have to rise to life! Let us reflect. By life in this relation is meant that which lives, an organism endowed with life’s properties. Are these properties unique? Or is there some point of fluxion where the properties of life at their minima arise in the activities of not-life at some undiscovered maxima? A point at which some occult molecular complexities arise, changing matter dead into matter living? The answer must come, not through our abstract logic, but from our laboratories. Life, it is well known, has its phenomena inherent in, and strictly confined to, a highly complex compound, with fixed chemical constituents. This compound, in its living state, is known as protoplasm. It is clear, colourless, and, to our finest optical resources, devoid of discoverable structure. There is not a living thing on earth but possesses its life in protoplasm, from a microscopic fungus to man. To depict the properties of life in irreducible simplicity, take one of the lowliest instances within the present range of science. Let it be one of the exquisitely minute, almost infinitely prolific, and universally diffused living forms that set up and carry on putrefaction. The lesser of them may, when considered as solid specks, vary from the fifty thousand millionth of a cubic inch to the twenty billionth of a cubic inch. I select one that is oval in shape. It moves with the agility of the grayling and the grace of a swallow, the motion resulting from the rhythmic action of two motile fibres. This free and self-originating action is its first vital quality. Its mission as an organism, is to break up and set free the chemical elements that had been locked up in dead organic compounds. Its own substance wears out by this and other means; and it has the power to renovate the waste from the dead decomposition in which it lives; constructing, in the laboratory of its protoplasm, new living matter.