48 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORGANIC 



what channels they expel it, when they contract, has not been 

 discovered ; although in all probability it is strained through the 

 cell-wall. 



Such are a few points of the structure of this marvellous creat- 

 ure. For hours I have watched it with an ever increasing 

 interest, and when I left my microscope I could only feel that 

 but a beginning had been made in the investigation of its varied 

 functions. Indeed, I hardly know where to stop in the enumer- 

 ation of the rapidly accumulating differentiations of organs and 

 the specializations of functions. We have scarcely arrived in the 

 rnidst of creatures which possess barely such a sufficiency of struc- 

 ture of an organic nature as would enable us to distinguish them 

 from inorganic bodies, before we light upon, I might almost liter- 

 ally say, numerously appointed functions, each devoted to a sepa- 

 rate work. This, no doubt, teaches us that we are not to look to 

 any peculiar and absolute form of combination of the chemical 

 elements, Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, by which we 

 may distinguish the organic from the inorganic kingdom of na- 

 ture. The variously performed functions of the extremely simple 

 Amosba gave us the hint toward this conclusion ; and now the 

 but little more highly organized Actinophrys more than redoubles 

 the impression upon our minds, that it is a power or force, or, 

 as I have stated in the beginning of these lectures, a principle of 

 life, whatever that as yet uncomprehended principle may be, 

 that constitutes the vitality of the organic being, and distin- 

 guishes it from the inorganic thing. 



The most highly organized creature, even man, is no more an 

 animal, as distinguished from the mineral, than Amoeba is ; for 

 no one will pretend to say that when he existed in that em- 

 bryonic condition, the egg-state, which is as simple in structure 

 as the Amoeba, that he was any the less animate, that he was 

 any the less an organic being, than when in an adult state. 

 The more highly elevated and the infinitely more numerous 

 functions of man are not any addition to, but merely so many 

 variables of, the simple principle, vitality; alike as potential to 

 vivify the Amoeba as the Man ; but no further removed from the 



