WHAT IS PROTOPLASM? 



29 



ago, drew a distinction between living and non-living matter 

 which he now, without any explanation, utterly ignores. 

 He remarked that the stone, the gas, the crystal, had an 

 inertia, and tended to remain as they were unless some ex- 

 ternal influence affected them ; but that living things were 

 characterized by the very opposite tendencies. He referred 

 also to " the faculty of pursuing their own course" and the 

 "inherent law of change in living beings." In 1853, the 

 same authority actually found fault with those who at- 

 tempted to reduce life to " mere attractions and repulsions," 

 and considered physiology " simply as a complex branch ot 

 mere physics." He also remarked that "vitality is a pro- 

 perty inherent in certain kinds of matter." 



To sum up in few words. The term protoplasm has 

 been applied to the viscid nitrogenous substance within the 

 primordial utricle of the vegetable cell and to the threads 

 and filaments formed in this matter; to the primordial 

 utricle itself; to this and the substances which it encloses; 

 and to all these things, together with the cellulose wall ; to 

 the matter composing the sarcode of the foraminifera ; to 

 that which constitutes the amoeba, white blood-corpuscle, 

 and other naked masses of germinal matter ; to the matter 

 between the so-called nucleus and muscular tissue, and to 

 the contractile matter itself; to everything which exhibits 

 contractility ; to nerve-fibres, and to other structures pos- 

 sessing remarkable endowments ; to the soft matter within 

 an elementary part, as a cell of epithelium ; to the 

 hard external part of such a cell; to the entire epithelial 

 cell. 



