Preface.

I may now state, without any more particular reference to the motives, whether general or special, which gave rise to it, that this essay of mine had but one thing to do,—to protest, namely, against the thoughtless extinction of certain essential differences in a supposed common identity. I may illustrate this by a remark in a letter to me on the subject by the late lamented Professor Ueberweg, which (the letter itself is dated Jan. 16, 1870) is as follows:—"As I am neither a physiologist nor a zoologist, I cannot be expected to follow your argument into its details, but I am vividly interested by its logical or dialectical leading thought—the contention, namely, for the right of the logical category of Difference, as against that of Identity one-sidedly accentuated, as it seems, by Huxley." My reply to this was, "that he (Ueberweg) had hit the mark—that I had been simply laughing all through, and holding up to the category of identity, the equally authentic category of difference—but that it had taken a German to find me out."

In the same letter, Ueberweg proceeded to say that the question, in the first place, therefore, was evidently a logical one. Now this, doubtless, is true; but this, nevertheless, is not page 4 enough. If the question involves at bottom logical issues, it has been really addressed by Mr Huxley to physiological ones; and it is only in the interest of scientific accuracy to point out that the inference to a physiological identity has been attempted to be made good by Mr Huxley, solely through means of an unwarrantable trampling out of (perhaps, for the moment, involuntary blindness to) the most essential physiological differences. For example, if you identify all life in protoplasm, the counter-reminder is only fair that you must equally differentiate all life in protoplasms; for of no one living thing, and of the organs of no one living thing, is the protoplasm interchangeable with that of another; and this involves, instead of Mr Huxley's universal identity in power, in form, and in substance, infinite difference in all these respects.

In the statement of this difference—which is really a veritable scientific interest—I was led into a variety of expositions, and, among these, into an historical one. So far, now, as it was history that was concerned in this, I could not, of course, in one way, take any credit to myself; still it was precisely here that, in another way, I did think I might take some little credit to myself. If in the course of the essay, indeed, there was anything else that seemed to me similarly situated, it was the summaries—the summaries of Mr Huxley's views, namely, with which I always prefaced my criticism of these. I confess that I thought them exact—short, that is, to the shortest, but full to the fullest, and certainly fair to the fairest, if not also clear to the clearest. It has pleased Mr Huxley, however, rudely to shock my not immoderate complacency in both respects. Neither history nor summaries, it seems, can he regard with satisfaction. That is, it was alone for what was not mine in the whole essay that I allowed myself to take any credit as mine, and this Mr Huxley denies me. In the reply, namely, to which, after two years' interval, he has at length brought himself, it has pleased Mr Huxley—in those few sour-humoured words of his in the Contemporary Review for December 1871—to call the history a "travesty," and (by implication) the summaries "utter misrepresentations." That Mr Huxley, fairly looking at either history or summaries, should yet feel himself free to speak so, throws me back—I confess it—on thoughts of him.

If, as I say, the summaries could not, as wholly referring to the matter of another, be called my own, so neither could the page 5 history be called my own, and for a like reason. Nevertheless, as I also say, I had such consciousness of honest work in either respect, that I could not help allowing myself a certain satisfaction in both. The grounds, more especially for this as regards the history—the summaries I dismiss for the present—lay as well in the pains that still throbbed before consciousness, as in the fact that the narrative involved was known to me to be then only for the first tune presented in English.^* I fancied, indeed, that Mr Huxley himself would applaud here, for I believed him partial to a scientific historiette. Had I but known that he had in petto a rival history! I confess I had no anticipations of this: and, as to that indeed, perhaps he had it not in petto. Perhaps Mr Huxley has only benevolently got it up since—for my correction—by example of him? There at least it is—my historiette is a "travesty," it seems, and Mr Huxley, in the pages of the Contemporary Review, replaces it by his. Loudly! Ay, Mr Huxley, I venture to say, is not less loud here than the legitimate blind beggar whom Mr Home represents to abuse the interloping one thus:—

"I am the genuine blind man,
That villain seeks to grind one,
And poach one's field;
But I'll not yield,—
What! leave old rights behind one!

"I am the real blind man,
The genuine real blind man!
As for that thief
With eyes, may grief
Consume him! I am the blind man!"

Now this, so far as it is anything, is, as one sees, clever; but it page 7 is not an answer: it is only business. "My flock will expect a word from me, and will probably not be the worse of one: it will be, so far, a satisfaction to them, and convenient in use, perhaps!"

Be the nature of the cleverity what it may, then, one must pity the necessity of the shift; and, but for Mr Huxley's authority with the public—an authority quite just in its place, doubtless—the record, so far as I am concerned, might very well close here. That authority considered, however, perhaps it would be only duly respectful to the public—and even to Mr Huxley himself—that I should examine his observations in reply to my essay seriatim and at full. This, then, I shall now do.

To begin at the end, and travel gradually upwards, I must avow that it is certainly clever to take the three short clauses of the short concluding sentence of my essay as together representative of the whole, and so, in destroying them, destroy it! There is management in this—especially in view of Dr Beale's quotation of the sentence; but the question remains—has Mr Huxley destroyed, not my essay, but even this its short last sentence?

His answer to my proposition that assumes him to hold "that all organisms consist alike of the same life-matter," is only that it turns on the ambiguity of the word "same." Will it be possible to make this good, however? Does Mr Huxley try it? Or is the reference to Whately enough for that? As for the word "same," I do not believe it to occur more than twice or thrice throughout the whole essay: identity is the term I use for the most part. I have no objection to the word, however, and think it perfectly justifiable: identity itself is certainly sameness. But more—I shall accept Mr Huxley's reference to the authority of Archbishop Whately in regard to it, and the ambiguity of its two senses. Of these, the primary one is that of numerical sameness, "applicable," says Whately, "to a single object;" as, I wore to-day the same boots I wore yesterday, meaning, of course, the same individual boots. In reference to the secondary one, again, the Archbishop's words are these:—"When several objects are undistinguishably alike, one single description will apply equally to any of them; and thence they are said to be all of one and the same nature, appearance, etc.: as e.g. when we say, this house is built of the same stone with such another, we only mean that the stones are undistinguishable in their qualities; not that the one building was pulled page 8 down, and the other constructed with the materials." Now, this latter sense is the sense in which Mr Huxley, I, and everybody else, for the most part, use the word; but whether Mr Huxley, I, or anybody else use the word, the context will always show if it be the rarer, primary, numerical sense that is intended or not. Does Mr Huxley insinuate that I represent him as arguing that the protoplasm of this monkey is numerically the same as the protoplasm of that man? I feel sure that it is impossible for either of us to be so absurd. But if he does not mean that, what can he mean by the ambiguity he flourishes, and his reference to Archbishop Whately? Whatever he means, I take him at his word; I tell him that, when he holds all living things to consist of the "same" protoplasm, "same" is not to him the term as used in Whately's primary, but as used in Whately's secondary sense; I tell him also that as it is to him, so it is to me. According to Whately, when we say, "this house is built of the same stone with such another, we merely mean that the stones are undistinguishable in their qualities:" similarly Mr Huxley, when he said that all life was built of the same protoplasm, meant it to be understood that the protoplasms were "undistinguishable in their qualities;" and—using words quite in his own sense—it was that I denied. Ambiguity there was none, and Archbishop Whately, Mr Huxley's own reference, but proves my case. Consider one or two of Mr Huxley's own phrases! "There is such a thing as a physical basis or matter of life;" . . . . or "the physical basis or matter of life." There is "a single physical basis of life," and through its unity "the whole living world" is pervaded by "a three-fold unity"—"namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition." With such expressions ringing in our ears—and they occur on every page—which of us, Mr Huxley or I, shall be said to be the one who rather pushes identity?

Omitting the deep logical question that lies at the bottom of all, may I not say, then, that my whole argument is a completely valid and scientific one, founded on scientific difference as opposed to Mr Huxley's argument from scientific identity? And, in short, in attempting to stamp out all essential differences in the one non-existent identity of a vital matter, has not Mr Huxley simply deluded himself? If I only hold up, then, the difference he ignores to the identity he proclaims, that is much more than the "ambiguity" of the word "same."

Here, evidently, I am ordered by Mr Huxley himself, not to change my language, but to characterise these latter results as I characterised those former ones. If I spoke then of ammonia, etc., as due to chemistry, so must I now speak of protoplasm, page 10 life-matter, as due to chemistry—a statement which Mr Huxley not only orders me to make, but makes himself. Very curious all this, then. When I do what he bids me do, when I say what he says—that if ammonia, etc., are due to chemistry, protoplasm is also clue to chemistry—Mr Huxley turns round and calls out that I am saying an "absurdity," which he, for his part, "certainly never said!" But let me make just one other quotation:—

"When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of water equal in weight to the sum of their weights appears in their place."

Surely Mr Huxley has no object whatever here but to place before us the genesis of protoplasm, and surely also this genesis is a purely chemical one! The very "influence of pre-existing living protoplasm,"—which pre-existence could not itself exist for the benefit of the first protoplasm that came into existence,—is asserted to be in precisely the same case with reference to the one process as that of the electric spark with reference to the other. And yet, in the teeth of such passages, Mr Huxley feels himself at liberty to say now, "statement number (2) is, in my judgment, absurd, and certainly I have never said anything resembling it" It is a pity to see a man in the position of Mr Huxley so strangely forget himself!

Mr Huxley's next charge of "utter misrepresentation" on my part is, that I have talked of him as founding materialism, while it was "one great object" with him to resist it! I have been quite explicit everywhere as to Mr Huxley's double issue; but in the passage he refers to, I have only his first issue in consideration, as is the pitch of my essay in its first form generally indeed, and as—is perfectly well known to Mr Huxley. To attempt to hide his first issue from himself, then,—he can hide it from nobody else—by thrusting his head into the second, is but the sagacity of the ostrich. Seeing, however, that he resents my want of page 11 complete and formal analysis of the second or philosophical part of his essay, I have, in this edition, added it.

It is not every gentleman who allows himself so lightly such heavy weapons as "utter misrepresentations;" and I can only say, as regards them all, that I am really sorry Mr Huxley should have so indulged himself.

Let it be borne in mind, too, that Mr Huxley's critique, as above resisted, applies not to my essay, but to its short last sentence; which sentence, by the bye, happens (though I by no means disown, but completely homologate it) to have been a mere addition to the proof of my manuscript. Even so, he who reads again said last sentence, will find Mr Huxley's objections not only to be but word-deep—mere catch-words, then,—but to glance from the surface, without a scratch.

Passing now, then, from these three main and summarising objections of Mr Huxley's, I shall consider the others, taking them as they come in the extract, but, as said, in a course upwards.

The first that so comes concerns the nettle hair. I shall have contented myself, it seems, with taking my facts "at second hand." "A most amusing example," etc. . . . ."but why in the world did not this distinguished Hegelian look at a nettle hair for himself?" Now, my single action being only to oppose difference to identity, I contend that, if, of the nettle hair, Stricker said A while Huxley said B, I had a perfect warrant to point out as much—let my own results of examination of the nettle hair have been what they might, and for the obvious reason that the known Stricker was an authority, whereas I, unknown, was none. But all that is beside the point, and I seize Mr Huxley here in the act, as is usual with him in my case, of mere word-catching. I do not meet Mr Huxley's description of the protoplasm of the nettle hair by Strieker's description in the same reference. My action, on the contrary, is this: To Mr Huxley's description of protoplasm in general, I oppose Strieker's description of protoplasm equally in general, and I point to the difference between them. Mr Huxley will probably exclaim, But it was the protoplasm of the nettle hair I described! To this my answer is, Yes; but you immediately proceeded, and at great length, to identify all protoplasm with that of the nettle hair; and, therefore, I was perfectly warranted in assuming your description of the protoplasm of the nettle hair in the first page 12 instance, to be your description also of protoplasm in general and in all instances. Reference to a sentence or two will prove this :—"Not the sting only," Mr Huxley tells us, "but the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of such masses of nucleated protoplasm." Further, possession is expressly inferred "by many other organic forms" of such protoplasm as is possessed by the nettle; and when he talks of "the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal circulation," "put forward by an eminent physiologist," he has no idea whatever, he says, of confining this comparison to the protoplasm of the nettle sting. He says also: "Currents similar to those of the hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multitude of very different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they probably occur in more or less perfection in all young vegetable cells." And, immediately thereafter, in a burst of poetry as exuberant as the very vegetation he describes, he proceeds as follows:—"If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dulness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmurs of these tiny Maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be stunned as with the roar of a great city." Surely there is here an extension ample enough to warrant me in assuming Mr Huxley to believe the same description to apply to protoplasm in general, which applied to the nettle hair in particular. But the main interest turned on circulation : that Stricker denied to exist in protoplasm in general. Was I wrong, then, in an argument that sought only an accumulation of differences, to quote, as opposing Mr Huxley's so unexceptive authority for circulation, Stricker's equally decided authority against it? Why, too, should Mr Huxley cry shame on me for adducing the evidence of authorities, and not of my own eyes? Had he himself not already set me the example? What are these "weighty authorities" he alludes to, and what is the effect of them? Is not that effect to "commend the poisoned chalice to his own lips?" "Why in the world did not this distinguished" Biologist "look for himself" at all these "young vegetable cells" and "tropical forests," "before venturing to speak a word about the matter at all?"

But I have not yet given Mr Huxley's description of protoplasm one half the extension he himself gives it. "The proto- page 13 plasm of Algæ and Fungi," he tells us, "exhibits movements of its whole mass." Further still, he asserts of these phenomena that, "so far as they have been studied," "they are the same for the animal as for the plant." He says also of the white corpuscles of the blood, "The substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle." Then, "beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusc, worm, and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus." Lastly, read this :—"The nettle arises, as the man does, in a mass of nucleated protoplasm!" After such enormous extension of the analogy of the nettle hair on the part of Mr Huxley, I really do not think I have any reason to apologise to him for regarding his description of nettle protoplasm as applicable to protoplasm in general, and for opposing to his expressions in that reference, Stricker's in the same. Mr Huxley, then, must consent to be self-convicted, not only of incautious word-catching here, but of being his own "most amusing example," for, as we have already seen, he appeals to authorities, when he might have used his own eyes.

One sees how much the "history" sticks in Mr Huxley's gorge! The authorities I specially name, however, are Rind-fleisch, Kühne, and Stricker; these, surely, are original authorities (though necessarily not all the original authorities in existence), for they have all contributed something (Kühne is about the greatest living name) to the actual march of the science in question; and, surely also, they are, historically, the very strongest authorities that it is possible to mention. These three names I have used as vouchers for the correctness of my narrative; are we to understand that Mr Huxley impugns them? Stricker's "Handbuch," to which I "especially" refer, is now in English; and all, or all but all, the testimony I can possibly need will be found there. There indeed, substantially, is the same history that I have given; shall we understand Mr Huxley to call this "history" a "travesty,"—on the part of "his valued friend, Professor Strieker?" "Substantially" I say, page 14 and reference to sources on my part has been frank from the first. Nevertheless, this "substantially" does not wholly deny to me all grounds for complacency in my own work, and in regard to facts that were then for the first time communicated to Englishmen. But more, though I referred to these three names only as my supporting authorities for the history in question, that "history" itself, beginning with Hunter, passes through the names of Schleiden, Müller, Brown, Valentin, Schwann, Virchow, Leydig, Bergmann, Haeckel, Dujardin, Remak, and, alluding to Meyen, Siebold, Reichert, Ecker, Henle, Kölliker, Beale, Huxley, and John Goodsir, ends with—to my mind; the three greatest and latest names in this connection—Brücke, Kühne, and Max Schultze. Now, though—and like Mr Huxley, I am professionally educated—I cannot profess to have read all the works this list indicates (who can?), yet surely, if in view of nothing but said education, I must have read some of them,^* and surely these are the "original authorities!" On that head I appeal to my own referees, and as to the meagre half-dozen names mentioned by Mr Huxley in his rival history, I would not think it desirable to admit into my own history a single one of them, unless, perhaps, that of Cohn. Mr Huxley opines that "Dr Stirling's method of dealing with the subject is peculiar." I rather think, however, that my reader will now transfer the stricture, and wonder at the power of countenance that could lead any man to say "travesty" in such a case.

I have now to thank Mr Huxley for having read my essay "with much interest." Interest on his part in any writing of mine I must hold to be a distinguished compliment. All the more, then, is my regret that "much of it" should remain as "dark" to him as "does the 'Secret of Hegel.'" Perhaps it may be natural in me, with my own progeny before me, to wonder how this should be in either case, but I cannot omit acknowledging the singular good nature and loyalty of the reference in the latter of them. Still, somehow, I have that confidence in the excellent faculty of Mr Huxley, that I must think he does himself injustice here. I cannot believe my essay not to have proved sun-clear to him everywhere, unless in the wee,

^* Surely I may have consulted all of them—I ought to add, perhaps. At least it is not usual for one medical brother to deny another the freedom of the guild. Elsewhere, of course, Mr Huxley has so good a right to be proud of his own possession of "a nettle and a microscope," that I cannot resent his denial of "those not rare articles" to me.

page 15 wee bit into which the word idea entered, for a moment, with a somewhat Hegelian shade. Might I venture to hint, too, that Mr Huxley, if he still honours me with his interest, may find every difficulty in all these references dispelled in the popular statement (only fifteen pages long) of my first lecture on the Philosophy of Law?

I have given my reader the opportunity of seeing for himself every direct word that concerns me in Mr Huxley's essay, and I know but a single indirect one. That, too, I shall not withhold; it is this. The words immediately preceding the direct ones I have extracted, refer to "quite superfluous explosions on the part of some who should have been better informed" (then follow, as already quoted, "Dr Stirling, for example," etc.); and perhaps I shall not be wrong in taking this as an intimation on Mr Huxley's part, that I (the "for example") should have been "better informed." Well, it is a consummation always devoutly to be wished; but where, may I be allowed to ask, ought I, in this matter, to be "better informed?" That protoplasm, for example, was no longer an infinite variety of different cells, but an indifferent one material, as it were, in web? Well—perhaps so—but how then about the Germans? Really, where ought I in this matter to be better informed?—but no! I will not press farther this rhetorical hack! I will not as much as speak of Mr Huxley's poetry—of giant Californian pines and Indian figs—no! not even of the "great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard," etc. Did my reader ever hear of "the great ring-tailed bab-boon from "———But no!—[unclear: It] will refrain. Mr Huxley writes always an excellent clear English, and he does not generally yield to the charlatanism" of the platform.

It would probably be now in place for me, as against such serious charges as "travesty" and "utter misrepresentation," to bring forward the counter-testimony of other experts of equal, or perhaps higher, rank than even Mr Huxley. This, too, I will now forego. I will refer only to Beale, Bastian, Gamgee, to Dr John Brown, to Dr Hodge of Princeton; and I will quote, in allusion to my essay, this single sentence from Sir John Herschel:— page 16

"Anything more complete and final in the way of refutation than this Essay, I cannot well imagine."

On the whole, perhaps it would have been as well if Mr Huxley had not found it necessary to say anything more in this matter, whether for "his own," or for or against anybody else. At all events, "travesty" and "utter misrepresentation" return straight home to the nest that hatched them.

In a business reference, perhaps I may be allowed to add that I sincerely apologise to the public for the length of time this little essay (though republished in America) has been kept out of print in Great Britain. That I was not the blameable cause of this admits of an easy explanation. The public, too, will perhaps kindly excuse the augmented price of the present edition in consideration of the increase of matter it contains, as well as of the fact that, at the price put upon it, the first edition did not pay expenses. The very convincing proof of this is that my late very liberal publishers, though they sold an edition of 750 copies in a few months, found it necessary not only to divide nothing, but to apply to me for three-and-fi'pence, which had been expended in postage stamps.