976 Organic Compounds in their Relations to Life. [December, 



strychnine, and, manifesting themselves in a wholly different 

 manner, the still higher order of properties, including those of 

 isomerism, exhibited by the proteine bodies; all of which we seem 

 bound to ascribe to the respective orders of combination and 

 complication, under which these substances, possessing the same 

 elementary constituents, exist when they display these qualities. 

 In short their properties must be regarded as the result of the 

 respective molecular constitution of each substance. 



With still higher states of aggregation, could such be conceived 

 as possible, we should therefore naturally expect still higher forms 

 of activity, still more marked properties. But we have learned 

 that, while we may safely predict higher properties from higher 

 degrees of aggregation, we have no basis whatever upon which 

 to predict the nature of these properties. Not even in the sim- 

 plest inorganic reagencies can we foretell the result of the union 

 of any two elements. We cannot even say which of the three 

 states of matter, the gaseous, the liquid, or the solid, our new 

 compound will exhibit at our temperatures. The invincible solid, 

 carbon, when joined with oxygen, becomes a gas ; the type of 

 gases, hydrogen, when combined with another gas, oxygen, re- 

 sults in a solid at 3 2° Fahr. Much less can we predict the other 

 more special properties, even of these primary compounds. A 

 fortiori is human prevision inadequate to presage the result of 

 organic combinations. That the re-compounding of the proteine 

 bodies should result in a new form, possessing the quality of 

 spontaneous movement is a priori just as probable as that the 

 addition of a molecule of oxygen should convert the hydrides 

 into alcohols. 



This complex stage of aggregation is no longer an hypothetical 

 one. The molar aggregate resulting from such a recompounding 

 of the albuminoids has been discovered. It exists under diverse 

 conditions and manifests properties fully in keeping with its ex- 

 alted molecular character. This substance, discovered by Oken 

 in 1S09, and by him denominated UrschUim, recognized by D»i 

 jardin in 1835, and called sarcode, and thoroughly studied by 

 Mohl in 1846, who named it protoplasm, has now passed unchal- 

 lenged into the nomenclature of modern organic chemistry under 

 the last mentioned designation. 



Protoplasm is a chemical substance, found in considerable 

 abundance in nature, not only within the tissues of organized 



