But here the same sort of argument that was brought forward regarding the possibility of matter and its laws being self-caused, comes in as regards life.

[Footnote 1:  See “Critiques and Addresses,” T.H.  Huxley, F.R.S., p. 239.  So much is this the case, that it is really superfluous, however interesting, to recall the experiments of Dr. Tyndall and others, which finally demonstrated that wherever primal animal forms, bacteria and other, “microbes,” were produced in infusions of hay, turnip, &c., apparently boiled and sterilized and then hermetically sealed, there were really germs in the air enclosed in the vessel, or germs that in one form or another were not destroyed by the boiling or heating.  Dr. Bastian’s argument for spontaneous generation is thus completely overthrown. (See Drummond, “Natural Law,” pp. 62-63.)]

The argument in the most direct form was made use of by Professor Huxley, but it is difficult to believe that so powerful a thinker could seriously hold to a view which will not bear examination, however neatly and brilliantly it may go off when first launched into the air.  The argument is that life can only be regarded as a further property of certain forms of matter.  Oxygen and hydrogen, when they combine, result in a new substance, quite unlike either of them in character, and possessing new and different properties.  The way in which the combination is effected is a mystery, yet we do not account for the new and peculiar properties of water (so different from those of the original gases) as arising from a principle of “aquosity,” which we have to invoke from another world.  The answer is that the argument is from analogy, and that there is not really the remotest analogy between the two cases.  It is true that, as far as we know, electricity is necessary to force a combination of the requisite equivalents of oxygen and hydrogen into water.  But though we do not know why this is, or what electricity is, we can repeat the process as often as we will.  But mark the difference; the water once existing is obviously only a new form of matter, in the same category with the gases it came from:  it neither increases in bulk, nor takes in fresh elements to grow, and give birth to new drops of water.  But protoplasm has something quite different—­for there may be dead protoplasm and living protoplasm, both identical to the eye and to every chemical test.  In either condition, protoplasm, as such, has properties of the same nature (though not of the same kind) as those of water, oxygen gas, or any other matter; it is colorless, heavy, sticky, elastic, and so forth; but besides all that (without the aid of electricity or any physical force we can apply) one has the power of producing more protoplasm—­gathering for itself, by virtue of its inherent power, the materials for growth and reproduction.

If directly water was called into existence it could take in nourishment, and divide and go on producing more water—­and if some water could do this, while other water (which no available test could distinguish from it in any other respect) could not, then we should be perfectly justified in giving a special name to this power, and calling it “aquosity” or “vitality” or anything else, it being out of all analogy to anything else which we call a “property” of matter.