THE PHILOSOPHY OF MATTER. 95 



on the monads, espoused by Professor Huxley in his 

 lectures on the Liver tab rata, and Professor Haeckel's 

 " Protogenes," may be cited in proof of the opinions 

 afloat and pertaining to the ultimate atoms of organ- 

 ized bodies. The protogenes of the Jena professor is 

 described as "simply a minute drop of living jelly, 

 simpler even than a white blood-corpuscle, having no 

 nucleus, no nucleolus, no contracting vesicle — ' no 

 nothing' in fact, except the property of flowing in 

 various directions, and of protruding innumerable fine 

 processes or pseudopodia." Here is a living substance 

 devoid of all but molecular structure, yet showing by 

 its pseudopodia the actions attributed to the lower 

 forms of animal life — ex. gr. the Amaiba. The ques- 

 tion will now arise, If Haeckel's views be admitted, is 

 plasm endowed with a formative and selective power 

 in the building up and the disintegration and decay of 

 organisms ? Has science revealed a potential or pan- 

 theistic force — the universal Archeus — pervading every 

 form of organized matter ? Is it to be inferred that 

 life is originally stamped on the amorphous and 

 elementary molecule, that the molecule is advanced to 

 a distinct and tangible organization in the cell as in 

 the amorphozoa — the perfection of tissue being a 

 further process of the cell in its entirety — anatomical 

 and physiological ? However this maybe — and all 

 tlwit pertains to molecular morphology'" is likely to 



* " A Sketch of a Phi] phj Pari II. Matter and Molecular Morpho- 

 logy," published by Williams and Norgate, 1868, "ill Furnish abundant 

 materials to those Interested Ln these inquiries The chemical or elementary 



