464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



so, then it is what the older anatomists called a cell. Can there be 

 colloid matter without organization ? Both chemistry and physiology 

 answer in the affirmative. It may and does so exist in abundance. But 

 it yet remains to be shown that the substance itself, and all the other 

 necessary external circmnstayices^ can meet without producing or ex- 

 hibiting life. Not that our experiments have ever shown a single 

 instance of the fact. But it has never in the failures been shown that 

 every necessary concurrent circumstance was also applied. Far have 

 every one of the experiments been from the least pretense to a perfect 

 repetition of the exact circumstances which in the beginning did 

 actually witness the genesis of the germs of life. Kow that we have 

 these germs we think it easier to understand their successive reproduc- 

 tion than their primal genesis. How far this is from the fact we have 

 already noted. 



When we have a morsel, a drop of nitrogenized colloid matter, we 

 can easily comprehend how the attacks of oxygen will cause the evo- 

 lution of those forces which again will cause a difference of functions 

 in different parts ; which, again, by this very differentiation become 

 organs. Without a differentiation there would be no relation of the 

 parts ; no polarity ; no motion ; no circulation ; no duplication ; no 

 increase — the best evidence of the presence of organic life. In our 

 most ordinary notion of a cell there is all of this ; and this motion, 

 this polarity, this circulation, can be caused by oxygen alone, attack- 

 ing a suitable compound. A circulation, which is but a repetition of 

 rhythmical motion, once set up, organization is complete. Endow this 

 organization with continuity, or the power of repeating itself, which 

 the rhythmical circulation and polarity are capable of doing ; endow it 

 with the power of inspiring other colloid and crystalloid atoms with 

 like vibrations, attracting them into its own mass, and then ejecting 

 them again, arranged in form like to th£ original cell, which it will 

 continue to do from habit, and you have living creatures. 



Comparatively simple as this is, we are not so much concerned at 

 present with the origin of life as with its metamorphoses. Having 

 life in the shape of cells, and the first must be hypothetical, how does it 

 advance ? This is biological science. 



The advance of life is also simple. It progresses by characteris- 

 tics which must distinguish all organization, whether of organic or of 

 inorganic elements — cosmical, chemical, or social. It is by aggregation, 

 as Mr. Spencer has it — by a compounding. By compounding, and by 

 differentiation ; these are the two great laws. 



The primordial cell, by holding on to the new broods of cells as 

 they seek to escape from the parent hive — ^by retaining them and 

 giving them a new division of labor for the common family — com- 

 pounds and increases the energy of the common organism. 



Every living creature, as we now kn©w these creatures, is a com- 

 pound. Simplicity is nowhere. Even the simplest the microscope can 



