DOMAIN OF EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESIS 103 



arrangement and a long line of ancestors, and, if they 

 had not these, did not live at all, but were ( drops of 

 albumen of the most perfect simplicity/ l 



(b) The hypothesis recently put forward by Meresch- 

 kowsky, 3 of the two kinds of plasma, only concerns us 

 here in so far that it also tries to explain spontaneous 

 generation. 



As claims, ' which unavoidably must be made for 

 the first organisms/ Mereschkowsky cites minute sub- 

 microscopic size, absence of organization (?), capacity 

 of standing high temperatures, of living without oxygen, 

 of forming albumen and carbo-hydrates (starch and 

 sugar) out of inorganic matter, and great resistance 

 against strong salt solutions and poisons. All this we 

 see, so he continues, demonstrated in the bacteria. 

 Therefore they must have been the first organisms. 

 It may be that the bacteria were the first organisms, 

 but from Mereschkowsky 's statement that by no means 

 follows. But since these original beings were organisms 

 the visible organism we will willingly accept as non- 

 present and sturdily maintained, nourished, and re- 

 produced themselves, they were consequently perfect 

 living beings with an organization in the biological 

 sense. How, however, did these living organisms arise 

 from albumen particularly the power of reproduction, 



1 Naegeli : Theorie d. Abstammungslehre, p. 86. 



2 Prof. Dr. C. Mereschkowsky (Bid. Zentralbl., 1910, p. 278 : 

 Theorie der zwei Plasmaarten als Grundlage der Symbiogenesis, einer 

 neuen Lehre von der Entstehung der Organismen) explains the origin of 

 all higher organisms ^by symbiosis of mycoplasma and amcebo plasma. In 

 a general way, as this 'doctrine is put forward, it is not to be taken seriously. 



