of organization to promote international meetings and international coöperation. In almost every science inquirers from many lands now gather together at stated intervals in international congresses to discuss matters which they have in common at heart, and go away each one feeling strengthened by having met his brother. The desire that in the struggle to lay bare the secrets of nature the least waste of human energy should be incurred is leading more and more to the concerted action of nations combining to attack problems the solution of which is difficult and costly. The determination of standards of measurement, magnetic surveys, the solution of great geodetic problems, the mapping of the heavens and of the earth all these are being carried on by international organizations.

In this and in other countries men's minds have this long while past been greatly moved by the desire to make fresh efforts to pierce the dark secrets of the forbidding Antarctic regions. Belgium has just made a brave single-handed attempt; a private enterprise sailing from these shores is struggling there now, lost for the present to our view; and this year we in England and our brethren in Germany are, thanks to the promised aid of the respective governments, and no less to private liberality, in which this association takes its share, able to begin the preparation of carefully organized expeditions. That international amity of which I am speaking is illustrated by the fact that in this country and in that there is not only a great desire but a firm purpose to secure the fullest coöperation between the expeditions which will leave the two shores. If in this momentous attempt any rivalry be shown between the two nations, it will be for each a rivalry, not in forestalling, but in assisting the other. May I add that if the story of the past may seem to give our nation some claim to the seas as more peculiarly our own, that claim bespeaks a duty likewise peculiarly our own, to leave no effort untried by which we may plumb the seas' yet unknown depths and trace their yet unknown shores? That claim, if it means anything, means that when

nations are joining hands in the dangerous work of exploring the unknown South, the larger burden of the task should fall to Britain's share; it means that we in this country should see to it, and see to it at once, that the concerted Antarctic expedition which in some two years or so will leave the shores of Germany, of England, and perhaps of other lands should, so far as we are concerned, be so equipped and so sustained that the risk of failure and disaster may be made as small, and the hope of being able not merely to snatch a hurried glimpse of lands not yet seen, but to gather in with full hands a rich harvest of the facts which men not of one science only, but of many, long to know, as great as possible.

Another international scientific effort demands a word of notice. The need which every inquirer in science feels to know, and to know quickly, what his fellow-worker, wherever on the globe he may be carrying on his work or making known his results, has done or is doing, led some four years back to a proposal for carrying out by international coöperation a complete current index, issued promptly, of the scientific literature of the world. Though much labor in many lands has been spent upon the undertaking, the project is not yet an accomplished fact. Nor can this, perhaps, be wondered at, when the difficulties of the task are weighed. Difficulties of language, difficulties of driving in one team all the several sciences which, like young horses, wish each to have its head free with leave to go its own way, difficulties mechanical and financial, of press and post, difficulties raised by existing interests these and yet other difficulties are obstacles not easy to be overcome. The most striking and the most encouraging features of the deliberations which have now been going on for three years have been the repeated expressions, coming not from this or that quarter only, but from almost all quarters, of an earnest desire that the effort should succeed, of a sincere belief in the good of international coöperation, and of a willingness to sink as far as possible individual interests for the sake of the common cause. In the face

of such a spirit we may surely hope that the many difficulties will ultimately pass out of sight.

Perhaps, however, not the least notable fact of international coöperation in science is the proposal which has been made within the last two years that the leading academies of the world should, by representatives, meet at intervals to discuss questions in which the learned of all lands are interested. A month hence a preliminary meeting of this kind will be held at Wiesbaden; and it is at least probable that the closing year of that nineteenth century in which science has played so great a part may at Paris during the great World's Fair - which every friend, not of science only, but of humanity, trusts may not be put aside or even injured through any untoward event, and which promises to be an occasion not of pleasurable sightseeing only, but also, by its. many international congresses, of international communing in the search for truth - witness the first select Witenagemote of the science of the world.

I make no apology for having thus touched on international coöperation. I should have been wanting had I not done so on the memorable occasion of this meeting. A hundred years ago two great nations were grappling with each other in a fierce struggle which had lasted, with pauses, for many years, and which was to last for many years to come; war was on every lip and in almost every heart. To-day this meeting has, by a common wish, been so arranged that those two nations should, in the persons of their men of science, draw as near together as they can, with nothing but the narrow streak of the channel between them, in order that they may take counsel together on matters in which they have one interest and a common hope. May we not look upon this brotherly meeting as one of many signs that science, though she works in a silent manner and in ways unseen by many, is steadily making for peace?

Looking back, then, in this last year of the eighteen hundreds, on the century which is drawing to a close, while we may see in the history of scientific inquiry much which, telling the man

of science of his shortcomings and his weakness, bids him be humble, we also see much, perhaps more, which gives him hope. Hope is, indeed, one of the watchwords of science. In the latter-day writings of some who know not science much may be read which shows that the writer is losing or has lost hope in the future of mankind. There are not a few of these; their repeated utterances make a sign of the times. Seeing in matters lying outside science few marks of progress and many tokens of decline or decay, recognizing in science its material benefits only, such men have thoughts of despair when they look forward to the times to come. But if there be any truth in what I have attempted to urge to-night, if the intellectual, if the moral influences of science are no less marked than her material benefits, if, moreover, that which she has done is but the earnest of that which she shall do, such men may pluck up courage and gather strength by laying hold of her garment. We men of science at least need not share their views or their fears. Our feet are set, not on the shifting sands of the opinions and of the fancies of the day, but on a solid foundation of verified truth, which by the labors of each succeeding age is made broader and more firm. To us the past is a thing to look back upon, not with regret, not as something which has been lost never to be regained, but with content, as something whose influence is with us still, helping us on our further way. With us, indeed, the past points not to itself, but to the future; the golden age is in front of us, not behind us; that which we do know is a lamp whose brightest beams are shed into the unknown before us, showing us how much there is in front and lighting up the way to reach it. We are confident in the advance because, as each one of us feels that any step forward which he may make is not ordered by himself and is not the result of his own sole efforts in the present, but is, and that in large measure, the outcome of the labors of others in the past, so each one of us has the sure and certain hope that as the past has helped him, so his efforts, be they great or be they small, will be a help to those to come.

ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 1

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I have translated the term "Protoplasm," which is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words "the physical basis of life." I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel - so widely spread is the conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware that matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, "the physical basis or matter of life," that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense.

What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living beings? What community of faculty can there be between the brightly-colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?

Again, think of the microscopic fungus - a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to

1 The substance of this paper was contained in an address which was delivered in Edinburgh in 1868. The paper was published in Lay Sermons, 1870.