278 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
THE CHAIN OF THE ANIMAL ANCESTORS, OR THE 
SERIES OF THE PROGENITORS, OF MAN. 
(Comp. Ch, XX., XXI.; Plate XIV. and p. 22). 
FIRST HALF OF THE SERIES OF THE ANCESTORS OF MAN. 
INVERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN (Prochordata). 
First SracEe: Monera. 
The most ancient ancestors of Man, as of all other 
organisms, were living creatures of the simplest kind 
imaginable, organisms without organs, like the still 
living Monera. They consisted of simple, homogeneous, 
structureless and formless little lumps of mucous or 
albuminous matter (protoplasm), like the still living Pro- 
tamceba primitiva. (Compare vol. i. p. 186, Fig. 1.) The form 
value of these most ancient ancestors of man was not even 
equal to that of a cell, but merely that of a cytod (compare 
vol. i. p. 347); for, as in the case of all Monera, the little lamp 
of protoplasm did not as yet possess a celi-kernel. The first 
of these Monera originated in the beginning of the Lauren- 
tian period by spontaneous generation, or archigony, out of 
so-called “inorganic combinations,” namely, out of simple 
combinations of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. 
The assumption of this spontaneous generation, that is, of 
a mechanical origin of the first organisms from inorganic 
matter, has been proved in our thirteenth chapter to be 
a necessary hypothesis. (Compare vol. i. p. 338.) A direct 
