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Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may have been intentional. At 65 any rate, the matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or 70 indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm.

Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light so much 75 eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on for ever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau 80 de chagrin differs from Balzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every exertion.

For example, this present lecture, 85 whatever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted 90 in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By and by, I shall 95 probably have recourse to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more 100 or less modified, of another animal - a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial operations in the process 105 of cooking.

But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old funo

tions as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I possess, 110 will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert 115 the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into

man.

Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might 120 sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo 125 shipwreck, the crustacean might, and probably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing 190 better were to be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more trouble than that 135 of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster.

Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution 140 for protoplasm, and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of which, 145 so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease. A solution 150 of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I 155 need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man

from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. 160 An animal cannot make protoplasm,

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but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant -the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is appropriate to itself.

Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. A fluid 170 containing carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, which offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, with a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigour, but grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of proto180 plasm which it originally possessed;

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in this way building up the matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the universe.

Thus, the animal can only raise 185 the complex substance of dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm; while the plant can raise the less complex substances carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts - to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, appear to need 195 higher compounds to start with; and no known plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phos200 phorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, 205 need the process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so far as

this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents be supplied 210 except nitrogenous salts, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm.

Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right 215 to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous compounds, 220 which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds 225 up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute aud disperse.

But it will be observed, that the 280 existence of the matter of life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds; namely, carbonic acid, water, and certain nitrogenous bodies. Withdraw any one of these three from 235 the world, and all vital phænomena come to an end. They are as necessary to the protoplasm of the plant as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, 240 oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen 245 produce water; nitrogen and other elements give rise to nitrogenous salts. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But when 250 they are brought together, under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phænomena of life.

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I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any 260 one term of the series may not be used to any of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the 265 various powers and activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which they are composed.

When hydrogen and oxygen are 270 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 275 place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32° Fahrenheit, 280 and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same tempera285 ture, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable 290 foliage.

Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange phænomena, the properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe that, in some 295 way or another they result from the properties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume that a something called 'aquosity' entered into and took possession of 300 the oxidated hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of the hoar frost. On

the contrary, we live in the hope 305 and in the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by and by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as 310 we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.

Is the case in any way changed 315 when carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts disappear, and in their place, under the influence of preexisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of life 320 makes its appearance?

It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties of the components and the properties of the resultant, but neither was there 325 in the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as the influence of pre-existing living matter is something quite unintelligible; but does anybody quite com-330 prehend the modus operandi of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen?

What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existence 335 in the living matter of a something which has no representative, or correlative, in the not living matter which gave rise to it? What better philosophical status has 'vitality' than 340 aquosity'? And why should 'vitality' hope for a better fate than the other 'itys' which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by 345 its inherent 'meat-roasting quality,' and scorned the 'materialism' of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney.

If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems to

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me that we are logically bound to 355 apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phænomena exhibited by water are its properties, 360 so are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.

If the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible ground 365 for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its mole

cules.

SOCIAL ETHICS. [From The Struggle for Existence in Human Society (1888)]

I am as strongly convinced as the most pronounced individualist can be, that it is desirable that every man should be free to act in every way 5 which does not limit the corresponding freedom of his fellow-man. But I fail to connect that great induction of political science with the practical corollary which is frequently drawn 10 from it: that the State that is, the people in their corporate capacity has no business to meddle with anything but the administration of justice and external defence. It 15 appears to me that the amount of freedom which incorporate society may fitly leave to its members is not a fixed quantity, to be determined a priori by deduction from the fiction 20 called 'natural rights'; but that it must be determined by, and vary with, circumstances. I conceive it to be demonstrable that the higher and the more complex the organisation 25 of the social body, the more closely is the life of each member bound up with that of the whole; and the larger becomes the category of acts which cease to be merely self-regarding, and 30 which interfere with the freedom of others more or less seriously.

If a squatter, living ten miles away from any neighbour, chooses to burn his house down to get rid of vermin, 35 there may be no necessity (in the absence of insurance offices) that the law should interfere with his freedom

Herrig-Förster, British Authors.

of action; his act can hurt nobody but himself. But, if the dweller in a street chooses to do the same 40 thing, the State very properly makes such a proceeding a crime, and punishes it as such. He does meddle with his neighbour's freedom, and that seriously. So it might, perhaps, 45 be a tenable doctrine, that it would be needless, and even tyrannous, to make education compulsory in a sparse agricultural population, living in abundance on the produce of its 50 own soil; but, in a densely populated manufacturing country, struggling for existence with competitors, every ignorant person tends to become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer 55 of the liberty of, his fellows, and an obstacle to their success. Under such circumstances an education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for purposes of defence.

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That State action always has been more or less misdirected, and always will be so, is, I believe, perfectly true. But I am not aware that it is more true of the action of men 65 in their corporate capacity than it is of the doings of individuals. The wisest and most dispassionate man in existence, merely wishing to go from one stile in a field to the op- 70 posite, will not walk quite straight

he is always going a little wrong, and always correcting himself; and I can only congratulate the indi

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76 vidualist who is able to say that his general course of life has been of a less undulatory character. To abolish State action, because its direction is never more than approxim80 ately correct, appears to me to be much the same thing as abolishing the man at the wheel altogether, because, do what he will, the ship yaws more or less. 'Why should I 85 be robbed of my property to pay for teaching another man's children?' is an individualist question, which is not unfrequently put as if it settled the whole business. Perhaps it does, 90 but I find difficulties in seeing why it should. The parish in which I live makes me pay my share for the paving and lighting of a great many streets that I never pass through; 95 and I might plead that I am robbed to smooth the way and lighten the darkness of other people. But I am afraid the parochial authorities would not let me off on this plea; and I must 100 confess I do not see why they should.

I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I have every reason to believe that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly with105 out a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible abstract or concrete 'rights' or property of any description. If a foot was not set upon me, at once, as a squalling 110 nuisance, it was either the natural affection of those about me, which

I certainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before my birth, was painfully built up by the society into which I 115 intruded, that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for, taught, saved from the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I did anything to deserve 120 those advantages. And, if I possess anything now, it strikes me that, though I may have fairly earned my day's wages for my day's work, and may justly call them my property — 125 yet, without that organisation of society, created out of the toil and blood of long generations before my time, I should probably have had nothing but a flint axe and an in- 130 different hut to call my own; and even those would be mine only so long as no stronger savage came my way.

So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, done all these things for 135 me, asks me in turn to do something towards its preservation

even if

that something is to contribute to the teaching of other men's children I really, in spite of all my individual- 140 ist leanings, feel rather ashamed to say no. And if I were not ashamed, I cannot say that I think that society would be dealing unjustly with me in converting the moral obligation 145 into a legal one. There is a manifest unfairness in letting all the burden be borne by the willing horse.

JOHN RUSKIN.

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900) was born in London, as the only son of a wealthy wine-merchant of Scottish descent. He was brought up on at once Puritanical and artistic principles, and, from his sixth year, shared in his father's frequent journeys all over England and to the Continent. These travels early awakened in him a passionate love for nature and a remark

able taste for beautiful scenery and for landscape-painting. At the age of eighteen, he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1843. But, independent of a profession, he devoted all his energies to the study of art, and, at twenty-four, was inspired by his enthusiastic admiration for Turner to write his first volume of Modern Painters (1843),

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