ON STRUCTURE AND STRUCTURELESS. 277 



observations, and discard all prophetic assui'ances, we shall 

 come to a very different conclusion. Look where we will in 

 the living world among organisms, high and low, complex and 

 simple, at the earliest period of existence, in the adult and in 

 old age, in forms and types of such antiquity that, could we 

 carry ourselves back for tens of thousands of years, we should 

 find examples of the very same forms growing and multiplying 

 as are now with us, and in creatures which have perhaps only 

 exhibited their present characteristics duriog recent times. 

 We come face to face with perfectly cleai', transparent, 

 colourless, semi-fluid or diffluent matter, so utterly devoid of 

 any character to which the term " structure " can with fairness 

 be applied that every part moves freely, not only from one 

 place to another, or vibrates backwards and forwards, but 

 every part seems to move into and out of every other part. If 

 " structure '' can be applied to this matter, the term may be 

 applied to clear mucilage, or to syrup, or to water in the 

 liquid state. We must then carefully distinguish the " struc- 

 ture" we mean when we apply the word to mobile liquids 

 from that we indicate when we speak of the " structure " of a 

 tissue, of a cell, or to the " structure " of a ciystal, of a rock, 

 &c. By " structureless" I mean not only that no threads, or 

 fibres, or lines, or dots, or parts, or particles can be discerned 

 by the use of the highest powers of the microscope, but that 

 every part of the matter termed " structureless " is mobile, 

 and can freely pass amongst other portions, and concerning 

 which structure of every kind must be considered absent if the 

 question be regarded from a purely theoretical standpoint only. 



No tissue can be formed, no structure can be evolved, no 

 secretion produced, no beat of heart or movement of respira- 

 tion, no contraction of muscle, no emanation or flow of nerve- 

 current, not even the lashing of a cilium, or the taking up of 

 a particle of food, can be effected without changes in the 

 absolutely structureless. How any one in these days, with the 

 facts before him, can be searching for structure which shall 

 enable him to account for actions a.nd functions peculiar to 

 living things is most extraordinary. All that lives, and all 

 that has lived, has begun not in structure, but in the 

 structureless ; and whenever in a living thing structure is 

 found there some time before would have been discovered 

 structureless living matter only. 



While no one can be found who will maintain that all 

 function and peculiarity of arrangement, and of chemical 

 composition, of variety of organisation and type in the living 

 world, is due to original structure certainly existing, though 

 not discovered, at the earliest period of existence of the 



