. Life presupposes the
intussusception of plasma-micellae; hence it ceases as soon as the
arrangement of micellae is so far disordered by injurious influences that
that process of growth becomes impossible.

The resulting organism must be perfectly simple, a mass of plasma with
micellae as yet unarranged, because any organization without a preceding
organizing activity is inconceivable. For this reason known organisms
cannot have orginated spontaneously; a kingdom of simpler beings must
have preceded them (_Probien_--the sub-organic kingdom).

The growth of the masses of plasma continues as long as the conditions
of nutrition are favorable. If these become unfavorable, a resting
period (latent life) or partial or total death occurs, according to
circumstances (as lack of nutritive material, lowering of temperature,
comparative exsiccation). The growth of plants and animals is nothing
else than the continuation of the growth begun in the primordial plasma.
This growth still continues wherever the primordial plasma exists.

4. PARTIAL DEATH OF THE INDIVIDUAL: REPRODUCTION.

Since the primordial masses of plasma continue to attract nutritive
materials indefinitely and apply them to growth, the nutritive materials
are used up in one place and another and the substance which is no
longer nourished is in great measure disintegrated. A general condition
of equilibrium now sets in, in which the viable plasma masses continue
to gain just as much in growth as there is dead plasma broken down and
changed back into the original nutritive materials.

In the primordial condition this balancing process is irregular and
accidental and remains so even later in many of the lowest organisms.
Little by little it becomes phylogenetically more regular by individuals
attaining to a more definite size and term of life, while only the germs
detached from them remain viable. This phenomenon known as reproduction
has a double origin.

_A._ The portions of primordial plasma that grow to a more considerable
size as soft, half-liquid masses break up by the mechanical action of
external circumstances into smaller portions of indefinite number and
size. This typifies irregular and accidental reproduction of the lowest
order.

In the offspring of the primordial plasma division becomes gradually
more and more regular as a result of the increasing organization of the
substance, and especially as a result of the formation of an envelope
about it