37 
tion which scientific observers give of it, or in other words, they 
say that it is a bit of protoplasm. This is a microscopic animal- 
cule found in stagnant waters, to which they have given the name 
of the Protameba primitiva. The origin of the name is this— 
there was an animalcule before known to us under the name of 
the proteus animalcule, so called from its incessant changes of 
shape, similar to the ‘one in question, but not so utterly destitute | 
of organism. ‘This they now call the Amaeba, a name which in 
Greek has the same meaning, ‘the changing.” And then when 
this still more primitive creature was discovered, in order to dis- 
tinguish it from tbe other, they gave it the name of Protameba 
primitiva, “first or earliest primitive Ameba,” a name in which 
science seems to struggle to express the exceedingly primitive 
nature of the creature. It moves, though it has no organs of any kind 
for progression ; its characteristic is constant and incessant move- 
ment, constant and incessant changes of shape. At one time it 
appears like a thread long drawn out; at another it takes a shape, 
it may be, more resembling some kind of flower; so that in point 
of fact you cannot tell what shape it is, or whether it has any shape 
at all. 
Now this characteristic of incessant motion is an important 
one to attend to, for it is a special characteristic of protoplasm, 
i.e., motion without an object or an aim, but rather as an innate 
and essential condition of its existence. Then it feeds, though it 
has no mouth and no stomach and no alimentary organs whatever. 
It seems to feed, so to speak, with its whole body. When it meets 
with that which is good for it to eat—presumably a smaller speck 
of protoplasm than itself—it envelopes it with its own substance, 
wraps itself, so to speak, around it, and the. one seems to melt 
away into the other. Then it feels—as it must do, to know when 
it meets with anything—although it is utterly destitute of anything 
in the shape of nerves. 
This then is the simplest form of life with which we are at 
present acquainted, and it is upon the existence of such forms of - 
life as this that the theory of the protoplasmic basis of life mainly 
depends. I will ask leave to digress a little from the main subject 
