xley, "simple
or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the
Potter." "Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm and polype are
all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses
of protoplasm with a nucleus."[86]

What then determines the difference between different animals? What
makes one little speck of protoplasm grow into Newton's dog Diamond, and
another, exactly the same, into Newton himself? It is a mysterious
something which has entered into this protoplasm. No eye can see it. No
science can define it. There is a different something for Newton's dog
and a different something for Newton; so that though both use the same
matter they build it up in these widely different ways. Protoplasm being
the clay, this something is the Potter. And as there is only one clay
and yet all these curious forms are developed out of it, it follows
necessarily that the difference lies in the potters. There must in short
be as many potters as there are forms. There is the potter who segments
the worm, and the potter who builds up the form of the dog, and the
potter who moulds the man. To understand unmistakably that it is really
the potter who does the work, let us follow for a moment a description
of the process by a trained eye-witness. The observer is Mr. Huxley.
Through the tube of his microscope he is watching the development, out
of a speck of protoplasm, of one of the commonest animals: "Strange
possibilities," he says, "lie dormant in that semi-fluid globule. Let a
moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle and the plastic matter
undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and purposelike in their
succession that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled
modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel the
mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until
it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build
withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as
if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal
column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one
end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due
proportions in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour
by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion, that some
more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden
artist, with h