262 The Lesson of the Unnucleated Cell. [May, 
the periods of senescence and growth ; the application is 
rather quality than quantity. The life energy being equal 
to the needs of the creature, it is the same whether it be 
exhibited in an individual or in a multitude, in a microscopic 
creature or in an elephant, in a May fly or in a goose. 
It is impossible to say that any form of condensed or 
concentrated matter can be immortal or unchanging ; the 
only immortality which can be conceived is that of the life 
energy. All forms of matter are gaseous and concentrated 
only by some adtive energy, which being removed the con- 
centrations cease, and the compound is resolved into its 
primitive forms, or is resolved by other forms. We have, 
through the organic, the inorganic forms of structure, but 
we have never the originally concentrated forms ; there is 
no individuality in material substances, unless it be in their 
primitive gaseous state. What is the philosophical conclu- 
sion at which we arrive ? The first unnucleated cell which 
was projected in so-called chaos — i.e., the Tether — bore 
within itself the fecundated principle of all living things. 
Science shows that all substances are in a continuous state 
of change, inhalation, and exudation, showing continuous 
accretions of new substance, and the exudation of exhausted 
material which is subjedted to changes, and is rehabilitated. 
What, then, becomes of the immortality of the substance of 
the Protozoa ? The immortality of matter, in the sense of 
unchanged living matter, must be abandoned, for matter 
without life is an inert mass. We have then to fall back on 
the life energy of the simple cell, and from it we must adduce 
not alone the organised forms of life, but also the inorganic, 
gaseous compounds consolidated through vital energy; and 
where does this lead us ? The whole of the hypotheses of 
Cosmogony founded on the nebular theory, with fire mists 
and flaming suns, do not appear to be founded on a purely 
scientific or logical method.* That the nebular present- 
ments are the initiating steps for the consolidation of Sun 
Systems is probable, but the condensation of the substance 
must be wrought by the life energy. It is well to talk of 
affinities, but there must be something to render these 
affinities adtive ; something to bring the various substances 
in contadt, to adt, as it were, as a filter to crude materials, 
in order to work them into true combinations. If the life 
energy be adopted as the adtive element, we get rid of 
the flaming fire mist, of flaming photospheres, of atmospheres 
* J. Herschel held it to be probable that the Sun is inhabited. If he held 
with the fiery nature of its atmosphere, with its burning body beneath, he 
would hardly have given his authority in furtherance of such an hypothesis. 
