Plasson

When living things made their first appearance on our planet, the very complex nitrogenous compound of carbon that we call plasson, which is the earliest material embodiment of vital action, must have been formed in a purely chemical way from inorganic carbon-compounds. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

See Letter 235.), that the vibrations from the protoplasm, or "plasson," of the seminal fluid of the zebra set plasson vibrating in the mare; and that these vibrations continued until the hair of the second colt was formed, and which consequently became barred like that of a zebra. ❋ Charles Darwin (1845)

Like all the other functional-activities of the organic cells, these soul-functions depend ultimately on material phenomena of motion, and more particularly on the motions of the plasson-molecules or plastidules, the ultimate atoms of the protoplasma, and perhaps of the nucleus also; therefore we should be able actually to grasp and explain them, as well as every other cognisable natural process, if we were in a position to refer them to the mechanics of atoms. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

Nay more, the primordial organic cells could only have originated in the first instance from non-cellular plastides or monads by their homogeneous plasson resolving itself into an internal nucleus and an external protoplasm. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

If we agree to call this active substance plasson, and its molecules plastidules, we may say that the individual physiological character of each of these cells is due to its molecular plastidule-movement. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

This is not inconsistent with our hypothetical ascription to the plastidules (or molecules of the plasson) of a complex molecular structure. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

The first and lower stage is the cytode, which consists merely of a particle of plasson, or quite simple plasm. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

The soft slimy plasson of the body of the moneron is generally called ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

These are what we call the "cytodes" (cytos = cell), certain living, independent beings, consisting only of a particle of plasson -- an albuminoid substance, which is not yet differentiated into caryoplasm and cytoplasm, but combines the properties of both. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

Their whole body consists of soft, structureless plasson. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

These two parts must have been formed by differentiation from the indifferent plasson of a moneron, or a cytode. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

But we must, to be accurate, distinguish between the plasson of the cytodes and the protoplasm of the cells. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

By this important differentiation of the plasson into nucleus and cell-body, the organised cell was evolved from the structureless cytode, the nucleated from the unnucleated plastid. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

Their whole body consists merely of a simple particle or globule of structureless plasm or plasson. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

The earlier and lower stage are the unnucleated cytodes, the body of which consists of only one kind of albuminous matter -- the homogeneous plasson or "formative matter." ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

The psychic functions of sensation and voluntary motion, which are here distributed to such very various organs and tissues, are in the infusoria fulfilled by the neutral plasson material of the cell, by the protoplasma, and possibly also by the nucleus (compare my treatise "The Morphology of the Infusoria." ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

* (* The plasson of the stem-cell or cytula may, from the anatomical point of view, be regarded as homogeneous and structureless, like that of the monera. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)

The later and higher stage are the nucleated cells, in which we find a differentiation of the original plasson into two different formative substances -- the caryoplasm of the nucleus and the cytoplasm of the body of the cell (cf. Chapter 1.6.) (FIGURE 2.226. ❋ Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1876)