GENESIS OF MAN. 47 



nitrogenized and carbon compounds in a high state of complexity 

 and instability, and then, as a mere continuation of a uniform pro- 

 cess, impresses this, first with the lowest and then with higher and 

 still higher vital properties. For life is unquestionably a product 

 of molecular organization. 



While, therefore, inorganic matter must be regarded as the 

 primordial ancestor of all organized beings, the first stage in the 

 genealogical development of all living things, and hence also of 

 man, must have been some form of moner. Haeckel enumerates 

 eight genera of moners now existing on the globe, and there can 

 be no doubt that there are many more still undiscovered, and their 

 extreme and absolutely structureless simplicity renders it highly 

 probable that they are really the first form of life which was 

 developed on the globe. 



The direct descendants of the moners are undoubtedly the 

 various forms of amoeba. About the only observable differentia- 

 tion required to effect this transformation, is the development of a 

 nucleus in the interior of the protoplasmic substance of the former 

 creature. This change converts the cytod into a true cell, and such 

 is the character of the amoeba, a simple individual of the first 

 order. According to Haeckel, neither the moner nor the amoeba 

 can be strictly classed either with animals or with plants. They 

 belong, together with many other lowly-organized beings, such as 

 the Flagellata or lash-cells, the diatoms and the rhizopods, to his 

 famous third kingdom the Protista. As moners, however, are the 

 lowest of all forms of life, he divides these into three classes, 

 animal moners, vegetable moners, and neutral moners. The first 

 class develop into the lowest animal form, the Protozoa ; the sec- 

 ond into the lowest vegetable form, the Protophyta ; and the third 

 into the neutral form, the Protista. He also speaks of animal 

 amoebae, and seems to regard these creatures more nearly allied to 

 animals than to plants. At least, he places both the moner and 

 the amoebae at the base of the animal scale, as the first and second 

 terms of the phylogenetic series. 



From the amoeba-group proceed the true Protozoa, which, 

 therefore, stand in the anthropogenetic line. Applying now the 

 biogenetic law to the Monda-stage of ontogenesis, we are able 

 to conclude that these animal amoebas, at one period in their his- 

 tory of development, formed societies or compound individuals 



