i88 PROTOPLASM 



relations, and make them still more mysterious, by intro- 

 ducing complications and false analogies with higher forms 

 of development. This endeavour was very apparent in 

 Kiinstler himself in his earlier work on the Flagellata. To 

 the same category belong also the scientists that crop up 

 from time to time, who have" a preference for paradoxes, 

 who feel a secret horror of all simple and straightforward 

 solutions of the problem, who in fine are only content 

 when they think they have found as extraordinary an 

 explanation as possible, directly contradicting all other 

 experiences. 



Any one who takes exception, at the outset, to all 

 attempts to explain the various phenomena of life, on the 

 ground that such attempts are devoid of importance, because 

 not made upon the living body or upon protoplasm, 

 renounces at once all possibility of an explanation of these 

 processes ; he shows that he does not take their explanation 

 seriously, but thinks it more correct to regard vital pheno- 

 mena as the outcome of a secret and mystical cause, which 

 it is not permissible to touch upon. Whoever, on the 

 other hand, does not share this point of view, will as little 

 as myself be of the opinion that I had prepared living 

 protoplasm by means of my experiments, but will admit 

 that bodies were successfully manufactured which not only 

 possess a great similarity to living protoplasm in their 

 structural relations, but also offer certain peculiarities which 

 hitherto were only to be observed in the same manifestation, 

 and for the same length of time, in living protoplasm. To 

 bring these results to bear upon the explanation of the 

 phenomena exhibited by living protoplasm seems to me not 

 only permissible, but even imperative. 



Now Kiinstler explains protoplasm not only as a living, 

 but also as a " highly structured " substance. In so far as 

 this statement has reference to structural relations actually 

 observed, and not to such as are supposed to be hidden from 

 us, ahd to be necessarily connected with the mysteriou^ life 

 of this substance, I can by no means agree with it. ^Proto- 

 plasm, as far as our knowledge extends, is in no way more 

 highly structured than the foams artificially manufactured 



