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rock and the painter that paints it, the microscopic 

 animalcule or fungus and the Finner whale or Indian 

 fig, the flower in the hair of a girl and the blood in her 

 veins, etc. Nevertheless, throughout these and all other 

 diversities, there really exists a threefold unity a unity 

 of faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substance. 



On the first head, for example, or as regards faculty, 

 power, the action exhibited, there are but three catego- 

 ries of human activity contractility, alimentation, and 

 reproduction ; and there are no fewer for the lower forms 

 of life, whether animal or vegetable. In the nettle, for 

 instance, we find the woody case of its sting lined by a 

 granulated, semi-fluid layer, that is possessed of con- 

 tractility. But in this respect that is, in the posses- 

 sion of contractile substance other plants are as the 

 nettle, and all animals are as plants. Protoplasm for 

 the nettle-layer alluded to is protoplasm is common 

 to the whole of them. The difference, in short between 

 the powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of 

 the highest is one only of degree and not of kind. 



But, on the second head, it is not otherwise in form, 

 or manifested external appearance and structure. Not 

 the sting only, but the whole nettle, is made up of pro- 

 toplasm ; and of all the other vegetables the nettle is 

 but a type. Nor are animals different. The colorless 

 blood-corpuscles in man and the rest are identical with 

 the protoplasm of the nettle ; and both he and they 

 consisted at first only of an aggregation of such. Pro- 

 toplasm is the common constituent the common origin. 

 At last, as at first, all that lives, and every part of all 

 that lives, are but nucleated or unnucleated, modified 

 or unmodified, protoplasm. 



But, on the third head, or with reference to unity of 



