70 
ALEX. W. STEIN. 
body, there will be found, under a sufficiently high magnifying 
power, among the innumerable red blood corpuscles, a compara¬ 
tively small number of colorless corpuscles, utW of an inch in 
diameter, which will be seen to change their form, drawing in 
and thrusting out prolongations of their substance and creeping 
about over the slide. These amorboid movements, as they are 
called, are of special interest on account of the “ wandering out” 
of these particles of protoplasm through the walls of the blood 
vessels, as you know they do in inflammation. But in addition 
to this, the absorption of small particles into their interior and 
the excretion of the same, is to be noted. 
This living matter is to be found in all the structures of the 
body. As a matter of fact, the body in its earliest state is a 
mere multiple of protoplasmic units, which are differentiated suf¬ 
ficiently to inaugurate the first series of changes, and these inau¬ 
gurate others in succession, until the animal is completed. 
Thus throughout the vast domain of the animate world, from 
the monera to man, there is but one kind of actively living mat¬ 
ter (which has been given the names bioplasm or protoplasm), 
and we, the highest of created beings, are but a compeer of the 
lowest. There is a unity of faculty and a unity of composition 
which pervades the whole living world, and the difference be¬ 
tween the powers of the lowest plant or animal and those of the 
highest is one of degree, not of kind. Two masses of living mat¬ 
ter, alike to the eye of sense, but not alike to the eye of reason, 
for one will form a dog and the other man, or from one minute 
germ you have the grand oak, from the other the lily. Then : 
“ Consider the lily how it grows; and yet I say unto you that 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.” 
Here, too, we see the correlation of organized beings to inor¬ 
ganic matter under the genial influence of solar heat and light. 
The plant lives upon inorganic materials, converting lifeless mat¬ 
ter into living bioplasm, while animals live upon the plant. Thus, 
directly or indirectly, living organisms are linked to the globe 
they inhabit, and the grand Scriptural dictum, u Dust thou art, 
and unto dust thou shalt return,” is not more philosophical than 
it is physiological. It expresses concisely the relations which 
