He also tells us in his letter to
Professor Tyndall, prefixed to his volume of _Lay Sermons and
Addresses_, that the "Essay on the Physical Basis of Life," included in
that volume, was intended as a protest, from the philosophical side,
against what is commonly called Materialism. It turned out, however,
that the public regarded it as an argument in favor of Materialism. This
we think was a very natural, if not an unavoidable mistake, on the part
of the public. For in that Essay, he says that Protoplasm, or the
physical basis of life, "is a kind of matter common to all living
beings, that the powers or faculties of all kinds of living matter,
diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially of the same kind."
Protoplasm as far as examined contains the four elements,--carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These are lifeless bodies, "but when
brought together under certain conditions, they give rise to the still
more complex body Protoplasm; and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena
of life." There is no more reason, he teaches, for assuming the
existence of a mysterious something called vitality to account for vital
phenomena, than there is for the assumption of something called Aquasity
to account for the phenomena of water. Life is said to be "the product
of a certain disposition of material molecules." The matter of life is
"composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in
which its atoms are aggregated.
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