330 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



elementary substance, namely, carhon (Gen. Morph. i. 

 122-180). 



Of all elements, carbon is to us by far the most important 

 and interesting, because this simple substance play^ the 

 largest part in all animal and vegetable bodies known to 

 us. It is that element which, by its peculiar tendency to 

 form complicated combinations with the other elements, 

 produces the greatest variety of chemical compounds, and 

 among them the forms and living substance of animal and 

 vegetable bodies. Carbon is especially distinguished by 

 the fact that it can unite with the other elements in 

 infinitely manifold relations of number and weight. By the 

 combination of carbon with three other elements, with 

 oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen (to which generally sulphur, 

 and frequently, also, phosphorus is added), there arise those 

 exceedingly important compounds which we have become 

 acquainted with as the first and most indispensable 

 substratum of all vital phenomena, the albuminous combina- 

 tions, or albuminous bodies (protean matter). 



We have before this (p. 185) become acquainted with the 

 simplest of all species of organisms in the Monera, whose 

 entire bodies when completely developed consist of nothing 

 but a semi-fluid albuminous lump ; they are organisms which 

 are of the utmost importance for the theory of the first 

 origin of life. But most other organisms, also, at a certain 

 period of their existence — at least, in the first period of their 

 life — in the shape of egg-cells or germ-cells, are essentially 

 nothing but simple little lumps of such albuminous forma- 

 tive matter, known as plasma, or protoplasma. They then 

 differ from the Monera only by the fact that in the interior 

 of the albuminous corpuscle the cell-kernel, or nucleus, has 



