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, _à 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 of 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."