HACKEL'S PLASMAGONY. 257 



viable [lebensfahig] plasma, that is to say, any quater- 

 nary compound like albumen which is ready to indi- 

 vidualize itself and become living. This corresponds 

 to the organizable matter of many physiologists, and 

 all believers in spontaneous generation. It is needless 

 to say that the term organizable is utterly unwar- 

 ranted by any facts. The very use of such an ex- 

 pression involves an hypothesis, which is immediately 

 converted into an assumption and argued upon, while 

 it is forgotten that there, is not a shadow of proof that 

 albumen is any nearer living matter than carbonic 

 acid or ammonia, and that all we really know is that 

 it is a pabulum more easily assimilated than the 

 binary compounds by certain organisms, although it is 

 decomposed in the process. This is certainly not being, 

 organized in the sense used above. However, for 

 Hackel it is not difficult to imagine [Autogoriy] that 

 in the primeval world, under such different conditions 

 of heat and moisture, &c., ternary and quaternary 

 compounds were formed constituting the " Urschleim" 

 (primordial slime or mucilage). In this " viable 

 plasma," Plasmagony takes place thus: "The first 

 organic atom group, perhaps an albumen molecule/' 

 attracts other similar atoms in the mother-liquor, like 

 the nucleus crystal. Thus the " little . granule of 

 albumen" grows and forms itself into a structureless 

 Moner (" Gen. Morph.," i. 181). Thus the constant 

 tendency is to identify the living matter with the 

 proximate principles we find after death, and to keep 

 in the background and glide gently over the vast and 

 irreconcilable difference between growth and develop- 

 ment, and all possible functions of any kind of merely 



17 



