Modern histologists have discovered a very intricate and delicate structure in many of the higher unicellular protists and in many of the tissue-cells of the higher animals and plants (such as the nerve-cells). They wrongly conclude that this is universal. In my opinion, this complication of the structure of the elementary organism is always a secondary phenomenon, the slow and gradual result of countless phylogenetic processes of differentiation, initiated by adaptation and transmitted to posterity by heredity. The earliest ancestors of all these elaborate nucleated cells were at first simple, unnucleated cytodes, such as we find to-day in the ubiquitous monera. We shall see more about them in the ninth and fifteenth chapters. Naturally, this lack of a visible histological structure in the plasma-globule of the monera does not exclude the possession of an invisible molecular structure. On the contrary, we are bound to assume that there is such a structure, as in all albuminoid compounds, and especially all plasmic bodies. But we also find this elaborate chemical structure in many lifeless bodies; some of these, in fact, show a metabolism similar to that of the simplest organisms. We will return subsequently to this subject of catalysis. Briefly, the only difference between the simplest chromacea and inorganic bodies that have catalysis is in the special form of their metabolism, which we call plasmodomism (formation of plasm), or "carbon-assimilation." The mere fact that the chromacea assume a globular form is no sign whatever of a morphological vital process; drops of quicksilver and other inorganic fluids take the same shape when the individual body is formed under certain conditions. When a drop of oil falls into a fluid of the same specific gravity with which it cannot mix (such as a mixture of water and spirits of wine), it immediately assumes a globular shape. Inorganic solids usually take the form of crystals instead. Hence the distinctive feature of the simplest organism, the plasma-particles of the monera, is neither anatomic structure nor a certain shape, but solely the physiological function of plasmodomism--a process of chemical synthesis.