For after scientists like K. E. von Baer and others had already declared it
probable that this bathybius is only a precipitate of organic relics, no
less a person than the discoverer of the bathybius, in the "Annals of
Natural History," 1875, {133} and in the "Quarterly Journal of
Microscopical Science," 1875, has suggested that the whole discovery is but
gypsum, which was precipitated in a gelatinous condition. Likewise the
utterances concerning the simplicity and lack of structure of the lowest
organisms, are to be accepted only with great reservation; for most of
these organisms show very differently and very distinctly stamped
structures; of this fact, anyone may easily convince himself, who has had
the opportunity of observing with the microscope low and lowest organisms,
and to admire their striking and manifold forms. Nevertheless, there are
monera whose structure seems to be nothing but a living clod without kernel
and cover, and which in that respect represent the lowest conceivable form
of organic being and life.

Now, relying on these discoveries, as well as upon the successful
demonstration, by inorganic means, of organic acids in chemistry, and
starting from the supposition that the first appearance of life must
necessarily be explained by those agencies which are already active in the
inorganic nature, many scientists have attempted the so-called _mechanical
explanation of life_. This attempt has been made most logically and
systematically by Haeckel. He says that organic _matter_, organic _form_,
and organic _motion_, in the lowest stages of the organic, which are almost
the only ones to be taken into consideration when the problem of the origin
of life is discussed, contain nothing at all which does not also pertain to
the inorganic. In his opinion, organic _matter_ is an albuminous carbon
combination, of which we have to presuppose that, like all chemical
combinations, under certain physical and chemical conditions it can also
arise in the realm {134} of the inorganic in a purely chemical and
mechanical way. Organic _form_ which, in its lowest stages, is so simple,
like the moneron and the bathybius, and which stands still lower than a
cell, is, moreover, something which there is no difficulty in explaining
from inorganic matter. Finally, organic _motion_ which alone is the last
and lowest characteristic of the organic in its lowest stage--in which the
process of life properly consists, and in which, ther