Chapter V 

 THE ORGANISM AND ITS PROTOPLASM 



Protoplasm and Mystification 



NOT many words belonging to purely technical and de- 

 scriptive botany and zoology have become so much 

 involved as has "protoplasm" in obscure speculation on the 

 part of biologists themselves, and in more or less spurious 

 regard by both biologists and generally intelligent persons. 

 "The new Anthony studies the protean forms of life and at 

 the end is ravished by the sight of protoplasm. 'O bliss,' 

 he cries, and longs to be transformed into every species of 

 energy, 'to be matter !' ' 



Though this is an undisguised bit of imaginative writing, 

 it undoubtedly expresses a feeling toward "the physical 

 basis of life" that in essence is no fiction. Many, perhaps 

 most, educated persons know its meaning in some degree 

 from personal experience. Whence this ravishment? Justi- 

 fication for approaching the protoplasm question from this 

 direction is found in the belief that the validity of what is 

 generally held to be strictly scientific observation and gen- 

 eralization is to some extent at stake. 



Were Purkinje, Dujardin, von Mohl, Cohn, Schultze, and 

 the other discoverers of protoplasm thrown into any such 

 state of mind by what they saw? Not so far as any one 

 knows. Yet I do not for an instant believe these observers 

 were less sensitive to the deeper meanings of the phenomena 

 of organic beings than have been other persons, scientific 

 and non-scientific, who more recently have been affected much 



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