THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 127 



trifling alterations of a single genus of primitive organ- 

 izable material, and that in all cases this * albuminous 

 material is the original active substratum of all vital 

 phenomena, may/ says Professor Haeckel, < perhaps be 

 considered one of the greatest achievements of modern 

 biology, and one of the richest in results/ 



Protoplasm then, in its most general and undifferen- 

 tiated condition, in the form of a naked contractile 

 mass of seemingly homogeneous jelly, is the substratum 

 for all the life-movements of the lowest living things, 

 even in their adult condition. A structureless mass 

 of jelly suffices for the display of all the vital phe- 

 nomena of the lowest organisms. Here, without the 

 aid of organs of any kind, are carried on the vital 

 phenomena of c growth' and c reproduction ;' here do 

 we see the first germs of that organic irritability and 

 contractility which attain their highest development in 

 the conscious sensibility and power of -movement pos- 

 sessed by those living things which stand at the head 

 rather than at the foot of organic nature. Here does 

 that which has what we call Life approximate most 

 closely to that which has no Life : and who will venture 

 to draw a rigid line which is to separate these two 

 categories from one another ? As we have said before, 

 the theory of evolution knows nothing of c absolute 

 commencements;' rather, as Mr. Herbert Spencer puts 

 it, ' every kind of being is conceived as a product 

 of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on 

 a pre-existing kind of being.' We must not, therefore. 



