FIRST PROTOPLASM. 13 



killed by excessive heat or cold, though 

 not by long keeping or moderate drying. 

 By these latter its vitality is only made 

 dormant, and may be revived by moisture 

 and warmth. It cannot be analysed ; any 

 attempt to do so acts like a touch to a house 

 of cards. The chemist is left to examine 

 the constituent elements that have fallen 

 back from the living state, and re-arranged 

 themselves into the not-living, the non- 

 protoplasmic condition. Only living matter 

 can be 1 protoplasm : there may be dormant, 

 but there cannot be dead protoplasm. 



In all probability the first protoplasm 

 was made by means of successive com- 

 binations and re-combination of not-living 

 matter, by the ordinary processes of nature. 4 



4 " Manifestly, then, there was a time in the past history 

 of the globe, when its matter was without life, and therefore 

 there must have been a time, perhaps at a point of intense 

 activity in the not-living matter of the globe, when it 

 became endowed with the properties of life." DALLINGER, 

 p. 32. [Would not 'acquired' be more appropriate here ? 

 4 Endowed ' implies an external influence, an endower, 

 which does not seem to be Dr. Dallinger's meaning. 

 J.W.H.] 



" Every process of nature that ever man has investigated 

 throughout all space and all time, results from perfect and 

 unalterable method which we call a ' law ' of nature. Then 

 why should the primal process, by which not-living matter 

 became, once for all, living, be brought about by any other 

 means than the pre-ordained action of competent natural 

 laws ? " DALLINGER, p. 39. 



