f building up structure and of transforming the energy of lifeless
matter into the living. Even Goethe (in 1807) almost stated this when he
said: "Plants and animals, regarded in their most imperfect condition,
are hardly distinguishable. This much, however, we may say, that from a
condition in which plant is hardly to be distinguished from animal,
creatures have appeared, gradually perfecting themselves in two
opposite directions--the plant is finally glorified into the tree,
enduring and motionless; the animal into the human being of the highest
mobility and freedom."

Let us examine for a moment this substance Protoplasm, and see in what
way it differs from inorganic matter, or in what way the animate differs
from the inanimate--the living from the dead.

Felix Dujardin, a French zoologist (1835) pointed out that the only
living substance in the body of rhizopods and other inferior primitive
animals, is identical with protoplasm. He called it _sarcode_. Hugo von
Mohl (1846) first applied the name protoplasm to the peculiar serus and
mobile substance in the interior of vegetable cells; and he perceived
its high importance, but was very far from understanding its
significance in relation to all organisms. Not, however, until Ferdinand
Cohn (1850) and more fully Franz Unger (1855) had established the
identity of the animate and contractile protoplasm in vegetable cells
and the sarcode of the lower animals, could Max Shultz in 1856-61
elaborate the protoplasm theory of the sarcode so as to proclaim
protoplasm to be the most essential and important constituent of all
organic cells, and to show that the bag or husk of the cell, the
cellular membrane and intercellular substance, are but secondary parts
of the cell, and are frequently wanting. In a similar manner Lionel
Beale (1862) gave to protoplasm, including the cellular germ, the name
of "germinal matter," and to all the other substance entering into the
composition of tissue, being secondary, and produced the name of "formed
matter."

"Wherever there is life there is protoplasm; wherever there is
protoplasm, there, too, is life." The physical consistence of protoplasm
varies with the amount of water with which it is combined, from the
solid form in which we find it in the dormant state to the thin watery
state in which it occurs in the leaves of valisneria.

As to its composition, chemistry can as yet give but scanty information;
it can tell that it is composed of