32 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



ning, and that we do not start, like the smaller exceptional phy- 

 siological school, with molecules themselves, and the assump- 

 tion of their spontaneous combination into organised life, depends 

 on this, that the great Germans so often alluded to, Kiihne 

 among them, still trust in the experiments of Pasteur; and 

 while they do not deny the possibility, or even the fact, of 

 molecular generation, still feel justified in denying the existence 

 of any observation that yet unassailably attests a generatio 

 osquivoca (the production of life without preceding life). By 

 such authority as this the simple philosophical spectator has no 

 choice but to take his stand ; and therefore it is that I assume 

 the egg as the established beginning, so far, of all vegetable 

 and animal organisms. To the egg, too, as the beginning, Mr 

 Huxley, though the lining of the nettle-sting is his representa- 

 tive protoplasm, at least refers. " In the earliest condition of 

 the human organism," he says, in allusion to the white (vagrant) 

 corpuscles of the blood, " in that state in which it has but just 

 become distinguished from the egg in which it arises, it is 

 nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every 

 organ of the body was once no more than such an aggregation." 

 Now, in beginning with the egg an absolute beginning being 

 denied us in consequence of the pre-existent infinite difference 

 of the egg or eggs themselves we may gather from the 

 German physiologists some such account of the actual facts 

 as this. 



The first change signalised in the impregnated egg seems 

 that of Furchung, or furrowing what the Germans call the 

 Furcliungskugeln, the Dotterkugeln, form. Then these Kugeln 

 clumps, eminences, mon tides, we may translate the word break 

 into cells ; and these are the cells of the embryo. Mr Huxley, 

 as quoted, refers to the whole body, and every organ of the 

 body, as at first but an aggregation of colourless blood-corpus- 

 cles; but in the very statement which would render the identity 

 alone explicit, the difference is quite as plainly implicit. As 

 much as this lies in the word " organs," to say nothing of 

 " human." The cells of the " organs," to which he refers, are 

 even then uninterchangeable, and produce but themselves. 

 The Germans tell us of the Keimblatt, the germ-leaf, in 

 which all these organs originate. This Blatt, or leaf, is 

 threefold, it seems ; but even these folds are not indifferent. 

 The various cells have their distinct places in them from the 

 first. While what in this connection are called the epithelial 

 and endothelial tissues spring respectively from the upper and 

 under leaf, connective tissues, with muscle and blood, spring 

 from the middle one. Surely in such facts we have a perfect 

 warrant to assert the initial non-identity of protoplasm, and to 

 insist on this, that, from the very earliest moment even 



