74 CHAPTERS ON EVOLUTION. 



in Amoeba, there is a wonderful similarity between the individual 

 germs of higher animals, as well as between such germs and the adult 

 and permanent stages of animalcular life. No anatomist could ven- 

 ture, for instance, to express an opinion as to the identity of the 

 germs of the highest class of animals. A protoplasmic germ, pre- 

 senting essentially the same structure and appearance as that of the 

 dog and sheep, gives origin to man himself ; and the stages of develop- 

 ment which evolve the one are strictly comparable in all save the very 

 latest to those that produce the other. Thus man arises from a 

 germ of protoplasm measuring about the one-hundred-and-twentieth 

 part of an inch in diameter, the material substance of which cannot 

 be distinguished by any microscopic or chemical tests from that 

 which is destined to give origin to his canine friend, or from that of 

 which the shapeless frame of the Amoeba is composed. Indeed, the 

 eggs and germs of many animals are strictly Amoeba-like in their 

 nature and motions. The germ of a sponge creeps about within the 

 parent organism in a fashion undistinguishable from the familiar 

 animalcule ; and there are zoophytes and other animals whose eggs 

 exhibit the same exact Amoeba-like appearance which man's own 

 white blood-corpuscles evince. It is thus a plain fact that whatever 

 complexities of body or of mind we find exhibited in the animal 

 world, arise from like matter and similar substance. That man, 

 equally with the monad and the Conferva, owes his origin to a proto- 

 plasmic germ/ in which are contained all the potentialities and pos- 

 sibilities of his after-development, is no piece of scientific romance, 

 but demonstrable truth. Protoplasm begins our life, as it continues 

 that existence for us ; and in this respect the Amoeba may be re- 

 garded as the type of all living things, or, like the famous freebooter 

 of the ballad, as veritable " lord of all" that lives. 



The universality of protoplasm as the basis of life may be held as 

 fully proved. Apart from the presence of this substance, life is 

 unknown to exist It is seen constituting the essential living parts 

 of animals and plants, from lowest to highest. Whale and animal- 

 cule, triton and minnow, tjie giant pine and the lichen, each and all 

 owe to protoplasm their primary vitality and the powers which 

 mark their varied lives. As Dr. Allman puts it, in an address to 

 the British Association, " we are thus led to the conception of an 

 essential unity in the two great kingdoms of organic nature a struc- 

 tural unity in the fact that every living being has protoplasm as the 

 essential matter of every living element of its structure, and a physio- 

 logical unity in the universal attribute of irritability which has its seat 

 in this same protoplasm, and is the prime mover in every phenomenon 

 of life. We have seen," continues Dr. Allman, " how little mere 

 form has to do with the essential properties of protoplasm. This 

 may shape itself into cells, and the cells may combine into organs in 



