THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 93 



the combinations and re-combinations of matter on its 

 surface, leading to the formation of different kinds of 

 aggregates, the molecules of which were large and com- 

 plex. Such molecules, then, existing in a state of solu- 

 tion, are supposed to have been as prone to undergo 

 changes under the modifying influence of incident forces, 

 as are those of the more or less similar compounds 

 named c organic' in our own day. Before the lowest 

 forms of Life could have been evolved, it is presumed 

 that there must have been gradually going on the pro- 

 gressive elaboration of an c organizable' material, re- 

 sulting, perchance, in the production of states of matter 

 more or less resembling those named protein, states 

 which, under the influence of incident forces, may have 

 been thrown into phases of unstable equilibrium, slowly 

 and gradually resulting in new combinations present- 

 ing such lowest modes of vital manifestation as present 

 themselves in the minute and simple jelly-specks con- 

 stituting the Protamxbte of Professor Haeckel. 



Modes of action and reaction between such unstable 

 bodies and their environment, not wholly different from 

 those which a colloid presents, may at last have led, 

 through the most insensible gradations, to those alto- 

 gether indefinite, though successive, changes which con- 

 stitute the vital phenomena of the lowest known forms 

 of Life. 'Construed in terms of evolution/ says Mr. 

 Spencer, c every kind of being is conceived as a product 

 of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a 

 pre-existing kind of being and this holds as fully of the 



