PLASM 



stituent matter. Protoplasm is for us a chenrical matter, 

 so pronounced, in fact, that the highest chemical actions 

 that we know of are embodied in it." I must, from my 

 point of view, entirely reject Oscar Hertwig's conception 

 of living matter as a "mixture " of a number of chemical 

 elements ; because chemistry applies this phrase to vari- 

 ous gases and powdery substances which are completely 

 indifferent to each other — a property which we certainly 

 do not find in the constituents of protoplasm. When we 

 speak of the living matter or protoplasm, the general 

 phrase does not imply that the substance may not have 

 a distinctive composition in each particular case. And 

 when we find many biologists still conceiving proto- 

 plasm as a mixture of various substances, the error is 

 generally due to a confusion of the chemical idea with 

 the morphological, and to a belief that certain structural 

 features of the plasm are primary, whereas they are 

 only secondary, products of the vital process itself in the 

 cell-body. 



The older biologists who first introduced the name 

 protoplasm and studied it carefully recognized that this 

 living matter belonged to the albuminous (or proteid) 

 group. The many characteristics which distinguish 

 these nitrogenous carbon-compounds from all other 

 chemical compounds — their behavior towards acids and 

 bases, their peculiar color-reaction towards certain salts, 

 their decomposition -products, etc — are found in all the 

 plasma-substances, and in all the other albuminoids. 

 This is quite in agreement with the results of quantita- 

 tive analysis. However differently the various plasma- 

 substances behave in detail, they always exhibit the 

 same general composition as the other albuminoids out 

 of the five " organogenetic elements" — namely, in point 

 of weight, fifty - one to fifty - four per cent, carbon, 

 twenty-one to twenty-three per cent, oxygen, fifteen to 

 seventeen per cent, nitrogen, six to seven per cent. 



I2S 



