THE DESCENT OF PROTOPLASM 177 



solid masses, and, since they no longer had a share 

 in the vital movements of the whole, formed dead, 

 inorganic substance. Thus arose the first inorganic 

 masses. This process continued. It is remembered 

 that at first hot, molten masses represented the 

 life of the earth. . . . When in the course of time 

 these compounds became solidified upon the surface 

 of the globe, or, in other words, died, compounds 

 of the elements that had thus far remained still 

 gaseous and liquid appeared, and these became 

 gradually more and more like protoplasm, the 

 basis of the living substance of the present day. 

 With the decrease of temperature and the lessened 

 dissociations there must constantly have appeared 

 more complex compounds, chemical substitutions, 

 denser bodies, and more involved and correlated 

 movements of the parts which were being massed more 

 closely together. Thus, the first forms of plants and 

 animals, resembling one another and made possible 

 by advancing differentiation, were able to exist. 



"We do not say, therefore, that protoplasm as 

 such existed from the beginning of the earth's 

 formation ; or that without beginning it wandered 

 as such from elsewhere out of space to the cooled 

 earth; or, still less, that without life it became 

 compounded upon the planets out of inorganic 

 bodies, as spontaneous generation would have it; 

 but we maintain that the movement that exists 

 in the universe without beginning is life, and that, 

 after the bodies now termed inorganic had been 

 separated out upon the cooling surface of the 



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