Natural Selection Is Not The Wind Which

Indeed Upon Much That May Have To Say, I Expect Rather The Charitable Judgment Than The Full Assent Of Those Whose Approbation I Could Most Wish To Win.

It Was Always Understood That Plants And Animals, Though Completely Contrasted In Their Higher Representatives, Approached Each Other Very Closely In Their Lower And Simpler Forms. But They Were Believed Not To Blend.

It Was Implicitly Supposed That Every Living Thing Was Distinctively Plant Or Animal; That There Were Real And Profound Differences Between The Two, If Only They Could Be Seized.

This Substance, Which Is Manifold In Its Forms And Protean In Its Transformations, Has, In Its State Of Living Matter, One Physiological Name Which Has Become Familiar, That Of Protoplasm.

We Have Spoken Of Beings So Low In The Scale That The Individuals Throughout Their Whole Existence Are Not Sufficiently Specialized To Be Distinctively Plant Or Animal: Yet These Are Definite Life In Simpler Shape.