ON THE CREATION AND GOD. 19 







monera things will, in further course of time and evolu- 

 tion, in duly sequent steps proceed. True, we cannot 

 get down to the dim ocean-beds to witness the actual 

 process of the production of life from matter by chemical 

 combination ; but though we cannot descend save only 

 in imagination, we can do the next best thing, we can 

 summon up from the vasty deep these elementary forms 

 of life in great variety, as witnesses of the truth of our 

 deductions. And they have been brought up in great 

 variety, in particular in the course of the recent expedi- 

 tion of the Challenger in the South Seas. Professor 

 Haeckel himself, in his History of Creation, gives minute 

 and careful descriptions of several of these remarkable 

 types of life, if such they can be called, which have been 

 thus obtained from an immense depth in the sea. These 

 since celebrated monera are the simplest of all organisms, 

 if that can be properly described as an organism which 

 possesses in fact no organs, and which consists only of a 

 homogeneous, structureless clot of albuminous matter, or 

 protoplasm. Strictly speaking, the moneron is not an 

 organism, it is neither plant nor animal, though all the 

 more interesting on that account ; for this phenomenon 

 propagates its kind by self-division, and absorbs neigh- 

 bouring appropriate matter, which displaces some of its 

 own albuminous particles : * that is to say, these am- 

 biguous creatures between mere matter and life possess, 

 in elementary form, the capacities of propagation, of 

 nutrition, and of growth, which are characteristics of all 

 living beings, while they themselves are certainly not 

 organized beings, according to Haeckel. They form, in 

 fact, the bridge between the two worlds, the organic 

 and the inorganic ; and though not living, they are the 

 original progenitors of all life, including the human. 



* History of Creation, vol. i. p. 186. 



