Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/19

 the conditions and laws of life, the nature of life, and the origin of life.

"Nor is this last stage of thought a fruitless or a hopeless one. The men of science of each era have been discredited by the mass of their contemporaries as pursuers of futile aims, and, although the majestic fabric of solid knowledge which they have reared attests their success, there are those still to whom the past teaches nothing, and who talk of the present predominant aims of science as chimerical and impossible. And yet, at no period and in no department of investigation has scientific progress been more rapid and sure than in the field of biology in the present century.

"An excellent illustration, both of the advancement which has been made in this direction and of the general interest which is felt in this class of subjects, is furnished by Professor Huxley's recent lecture on 'The Physical Basis of Life,' and the reception it has met with. Several editions have been called for and issued, both in England and in this country, and it has aroused a great deal of curiosity, commendation, and criticism. A statement of the essential or more strictly biological portion of his argument will probably be acceptable to many of our readers. The understanding of it may perhaps be facilitated by a few words of explanation in regard to the attitude or conditions of the question.

"When the microscope had reached a certain stage of perfection, a few years ago, it was discovered that all living creatures, plants and animals, from the lowest to the highest, were made up of exceedingly minute bodies called cells, each of which has a power of growth, reproduction, and decay, as truly as the most complex and developed being. It was supposed that, in discovering these amazingly minute microscopical structures, we had gone to the very bottom of the phenomena of life; but further examination has shown that this conclusion is erroneous. In the first place, it has been found that there are organic structures which are neither themselves cellular nor derived from cells, and in the next place there is a material of life lower still in the vital scale, and out of which all cells are constructed. Every form of organic structure is elaborated out of a common and universal material known in science under the name of protoplasm, and it is this which Professor Huxley terms the physical basis of life. The present view regarding cells and their relation to the primitive