Change is stamped upon life, but according to science, the opposite
also is true. Life, in its minutest subdivisions, is true to itself.
It knows no variation nor shadow of turning. Dr. Stirling remarks
concerning protoplasm:
Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can
detect no difference in them. They are to us, let us say, as
they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in power, in form, and in
substance; and yet on all these several thousand little bits of
apparently indistinguishable matter an element of difference
so pervading and so persistent has been imprest, that of them
all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed feeds
its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow
into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is
protoplasm; yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and
the mushroom’s the mushroom’s.
(1591)