The reader will already have seen that the toils are beginning to close round those who, while professing to be guided by common sense, still parley with even the most superficial probers beneath the surface; this, however, will appear more clearly in the following chapter.  It will also appear how far-reaching were the consequences of the denial of design that was involved in Mr. Darwin’s theory that luck is the main element in survival, and how largely this theory is responsible for the fatuous developments in connection alike with protoplasm and automatism which a few years ago seemed about to carry everything before them.

CHAPTER IX—­Property, Common Sense, and Protoplasm (continued)

The position, then, stands thus.  Common sense gave the inch of admitting some parts of the body to be less living than others, and philosophy took the ell of declaring the body to be almost all of it stone dead.  This is serious; still if it were all, for a quiet life, we might put up with it.  Unfortunately we know only too well that it will not be all.  Our bodies, which seemed so living and now prove so dead, have served us such a trick that we can have no confidence in anything connected with them.  As with skin and bones to-day, so with protoplasm to-morrow.  Protoplasm is mainly oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; if we do not keep a sharp look out, we shall have it going the way of the rest of the body, and being declared dead in respect, at any rate, of these inorganic components.  Science has not, I believe, settled all the components of protoplasm, but this is neither here nor there; she has settled what it is in great part, and there is no trusting her not to settle the rest at any moment, even if she has not already done so.  As soon as this has been done we shall be told that nine-tenths of the protoplasm of which we are composed must go the way of our non-protoplasmic parts, and that the only really living part of us is the something with a new name that runs the protoplasm that runs the flesh and bones that run the organs —

Why stop here?  Why not add “which run the tools and properties which are as essential to our life and health as much that is actually incorporate with us?” The same breach which has let the non-living effect a lodgment within the body must, in all equity, let the organic character—­bodiliness, so to speak—­pass out beyond its limits and effect a lodgment in our temporary and extra-corporeal limbs.  What, on the protoplasmic theory, the skin and bones are, that the hammer and spade are also; they differ in the degree of closeness and permanence with which they are associated with protoplasm, but both bones and hammers are alike non-living things which protoplasm uses for its own purposes and keeps closer or less close at hand as custom and convenience may determine.

According to this view, the non-protoplasmic parts of the body are tools of the first degree; they are not living, but they are in such close and constant contact with that which really lives, that an aroma of life attaches to them.  Some of these, however, such as horns, hooves, and tusks, are so little permeated by protoplasm that they cannot rank much higher than the tools of the second degree, which come next to them in order.