UNICITY OF BACTERIOPHAGE PROTOBE 375 



tion, as a result of a physical-chemical phenomenon associated with a 

 particular constitution of matter, of a protozoan or a bacterium, for 

 these organisms, although comparatively simple, are much too complex 

 to be formed all at once. 



A scientific conception of the origin of life should, on the contrary, 

 be possible, just as soon as experiment demonstrates that there are 

 beings of rudimentary organization, constituted of very simple as- 

 semblages of a few micellae, the most rudimentary of one only, which, 

 nevertheless, possess all of the characteristics of living beings, even of 

 those of a very complex organization, that is, the powers of assimilation 

 and of adaptation, with their corollaries, the faculty of multiplication 

 and the variability of characters. All these properties appear, indeed, 

 to be bound up inseparably, resulting from a single cause. 



We actually know a number of ''micellar" beings. They are those 

 which experiment up to the present time has shown to be able to pass 

 through ultrafilters; — the agents of bacteriophagy, of the mosaics of 

 plants, of the animal plagues, of variola, vaccinia, rabies, and of en- 

 cephalitis lethargica. And the list is certainly not closed.* 



These beings, manifesting what might be termed elementary life, 

 most probably form a homogeneous group placed at the bottom of the 

 two kingdoms, animal and vegetable, and from which are derived, by a 

 simple phenomenon of aggregation, of synthesis, on the one hand the 

 protophytes, and on the other, the protozoa. The name designating 

 all of this group should be "Protobes." 



We have up to now considered the question of the bacteriophage only 

 in its relation to the phenomenon of bacterial dissolution. It has 

 interests extending far beyond this. 



In the last analysis, all of human science is actually directed toward 

 the solution of two great problems; the nature of matter and the nature 

 of life. 



During the last few years physicists have materially advanced the 

 knowledge of their problems. And the significant point is just this, 

 it was not by studying matter in its tangible form that they succeeded. 



* Among the diseases caused by the ultraviruses it is necessary to distinguish 

 clearly those in which the agent is a protobe, from those whose agent is an in- 

 fravisible form of a bacterium. To the causative agents of the second group I 

 have applied the term ultrabacteria. In the last group we would certainly in- 

 clude scarlet fever, the agent of which must be an infravisible form of a strep- 

 tococcus. And there must be many more diseases which come within this cate- 

 gory. However, the difference between a protobe and the infravisible form of a 

 bacterium is not great. (See Immunity in Natural Infectious Disease.) 



