98 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
bladders arise from original semi-fiuid globules of the primi- 
tive slime, by the fact of their periphery becoming con- 
densed. The simplest organism, as well as every animal and 
every plant of higher kind, is nothing else than “an accu- 
mulation (synthesis) of such infusorial bladders, which 
by various combinations assume various forms, and thus 
develop into higher organisms.” Here again we need only 
translate the expression little bladder, or infusorium, by the 
word cell, and we arrive at the Cell theory, one of the 
grandest biological theories of our century. Schleiden and 
Schwann, about thirty years ago, were the first to furnish 
experiential proof that all organisms are either simple cells, 
or accumulations (syntheses) of such cells, and the more recent 
protoplasm theory has shown that protoplasm (the original 
slime) is the most essential (and sometimes the only) con- 
stituent part of the genuine cell. The properties which Oken 
ascribes to his Infusoria are exactly the properties of cells, 
the properties of elementary beings, by whose accumulation, 
combination, and varying development, the higher organisms _ 
are formed. 
These two extremely fruitful thoughts of Oken, on account 
of the absurd form in which he expressed them, were at 
first little heeded, or entirely misunderstood, and it was re- 
served for a much later era to establish them by actual 
observation. The supposition that the individual species of 
plants and animals originated from common prototypes by 
a slow and gradual development of the higher organisms out 
of lower ones, was of course most closely connected with 
these ideas. Man’s descent from lower organisms was like- 
wise asserted by Oken—*“ Man has been developed, not 
created.” Although many arbitrary perversities and ex- 
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