efore, we have to
recognize the _punctum saliens_ of the whole question--is only an increase
and complication of the merely mechanical motion of the inorganic, likewise
explainable by mechanical causes. This view Haeckel expounds in the
thirteenth and partly also in the first chapter of his "Natural History of
Creation," and explains the origin of the first and most simple organic
individuals either through what he calls _autogony_ in an inorganic fluid,
or through _plasmogony_ in an organic fluid--a plasma or protoplasma. In
fact, according to him, the only correct idea is that all matter is
provided with a soul, that inorganic and organic nature is one, that all
natural bodies known to us are equally animated, and that the contrast
commonly drawn between the living and the dead world does not exist. This
is but a repetition, in a more rhetorical way, of the same idea which
"Anonymus" expressed in discussing the question as to the origin of
sensation.

DuBois-Reymond--who, in his lecture at Leipzig, pronounced the origin of
_sensation_ and of _consciousness_ a problem of natural science, never to
be solved--is also of the opinion that the explanation of _life_ from mere
mechanism of atoms is very probable, and only a question of time. It is
well known that the experimental {135} attempts at originating the organic
through chemistry are at present pursued with an eagerness that can have
its stimulus only in the hope of success.

It is clear that the main point of the question does not lie in organic
matter or in organic form, but in organic _motion_, for even the specific
of the organic _form_ originates only first through _organic motion of
life_. If, therefore, life is to be explained from mechanical causes, it
must also be shown that the merely mechanical motion of inorganic matter
produces that motion which we know as organic motion, and _how_ it produces
it. The idea of "increase and complication of the inorganic, merely
mechanical motion," with which Haeckel throws a bridge from the living to
the lifeless or from the organic to the inorganic, does not yet give us
that proof; it seems rather to be one of those pompous phrases with which
people hide their ignorance and make the uncritical multitude believe that
the explanation is found: a manipulation against which, among others,
Wigand, in his great work, repeatedly protests, as also does the Duke of
Argyll in his lecture on "Anthropomorphism in Theology," having e