54 THE LIVING WORLD. 



of itself is thus ceasing to play so important a part 

 in biological discussion as it promised to do ; its 

 place as a primitive life substance is being taken by 

 the granules with their various products, deuter- 

 plasm, microsomata, etc., etc., and in scientific litera- 

 ture to-day we hear less and less of protoplasm. 

 Protoplasm is no longer the physical basis of life, but 

 if indeed scientists should to-day recognize anything 

 junder this term, it would probably be the granules 

 which are found in such abundance within the proto- 

 plasm. And yet even these minute bodies, small as 

 they are, can hardly be said to have reached their 

 ultimate analysis. They show different functions, 

 in different cases, and cannot be looked upon as 

 alike. Whether the analysis can ever be carried 

 farther, of course we cannot say. But certain it is 

 that protoplasm cannot be any longer strictly re- 

 garded as the physical basis of life. To-day the 

 only universal properties of protoplasm seem to be 

 that it is reticulated and has certain powers of mo- 

 tion, growth, and reproduction. It is thus seen to 

 be always a secondary rather than a primitive sub- 

 stance, and the term protoplasm seems to be an 

 abstraction from the idea of many organisms, just 

 as the term mankind is an abstraction from many 

 individual men. 



There are therefore many steps between the sim- 

 plest protoplasm yet discovered and the inorganic 

 world, or even between it and the simplest form of 

 living matter. Hence it is impossible to look at a uni- 

 formly diffused mass of protoplasm as the first step in 

 the life history. But however this may be, it will be 

 seen that it does not materially alter the significance 



