longing to it as
an individual, so that a part is thus elevated into a (new) whole."

It is to this simple state of the monera the _fertilized_ egg of any
animal is transformed--the germ vesicle; the original egg kernel
disappears, and the parent kernel (cytococcus) forms itself anew; and it
is in this condition, a non-nucleated ball of protoplasm, a true cytod,
a homogeneous, structureless body, without different constituent parts,
that the human child, as well as all other living beings, take their
first steps in development. No matter how wonderful this may seem, the
fact stares us in the face that the entire human child, as well as every
animal with all their great future possibilities, are in their first
stage a small ball of this complex homogeneous substance. Whether we
consider "a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle which finds space and
duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a
living fly, and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower
and fruit which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the
gigantic pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral
spire, or the Indian fig which covers acres with its profound shadow,
and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast
circumference," or we look "at the other half of the world of life,
picturing to ourselves the great finner whale, hugest of beasts that
live or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone,
muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among the waves in which the
stoutest ship that ever left dock-yard would founder hopelessly, and
contrast him with the invisible animalcule, mere gelatinous specks,
multitudes of which could in fact dance upon the point of a needle with
the same ease as the angels of the schoolman could in imagination;--with
these images before our minds, it would be strange if we did not ask
what community of form or structure is there between the fungus and the
fig-tree, the animalcule and the whale? and, _a fortiori_, between all
four? Notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold
unity--namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity
of substantial composition--does pervade the whole living world."[4] And
this unit is Protoplasm. So we see it is necessary for us to retreat to
our protoplasm as a naked formless plasma, if we would find freed from
all non-essential complications the agent to which has been assigned the
duty o