THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 93 



the combinations and re-combinations of matter on its 

 surface, leading to the formation of different kinds of 

 aggregates, the molecules of which were large and com- 

 plex. Such molecules, then, existing in a state of solu- 

 tion, are supposed to have been as prone to undergo 

 changes under the modifying influence of incident forces, 

 as are those of the more or less similar compounds 

 named c organic 5 in our own day. Before the lowest 

 forms of Life could have been evolved, it is presumed 

 that there must have been gradually going on the pro- 

 gressive elaboration of an c organizable' material, re- 

 sulting, perchance, in the production of states of matter 

 more or less resembling those named protein^ states 

 which, under the influence of incident forces, may have 

 been thrown into phases of unstable equilibrium, slowly 

 and gradually resulting in new combinations present- 

 ing such lowest modes of vital manifestation as present 

 themselves in the minute and simple jelly-specks con- 

 stituting the Protamcebae of Professor Haeckel. 



Modes of action and reaction between such unstable 

 bodies and their environment, not wholly different from 

 those which a colloid presents, may at last have led, 

 through the most insensible gradations, to those alto- 

 gether indefinite, though successive, changes which con- 

 stitute the vital phenomena of the lowest known forms 

 of Life. c Construed in terms of evolution,' says Mr. 

 Spencer, c every kind of being is conceived as a product 

 of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a 

 pre-existing kind of being and this holds as fully of the 



