Cells are a matter of importance.
To be sure there are cells and cells, and some are much more important than others.
For instance, there are prison cells, more’s the pity, and anther cells and honeycomb cells and ovary cells and many more like them. All these are small, hollow spaces with walls around them.
But there is another kind of cell, more important than all these others put together, and they are not hollow and do not always have a wall.
Perhaps you are not very much interested in cells, but you had better be in these we are going to talk about, for they have a great deal to do with football games and dancing and going to parties and picnics. In fact, without them there could be no football and no dancing and no parties nor picnics.
All these things depend upon cells. So we may as well begin at once to find out what they are.
These cells that we are going to talk about are alive. They are made of protoplasm. You do not know what protoplasm is? I can tell you it is time you did then, for if it had not been for protoplasm you would not be in the land of the living. The protoplasm made you; so if you are not interested in it, I think you ought to have been a cabbage or a squash or a liriodendron or some other thoughtless vegetable not expected to be interested in protoplasm.
Like a good many other interesting things, protoplasm cannot usually be seen by the naked eye; it is in such small quantities that it takes a microscope to find it. And when you have found it, so far as its looks are concerned, it would hardly seem to pay for the trouble, for to the eye it is nothing but a colorless, jelly-like substance. It looks more like the white of an egg than anything else. But remember it is not safe to judge protoplasm or people by looks alone.
Napoleon was small, and he was not handsome; yet if you had seen him, you would have seen the greatest man living in the world at that time.
So when you look at protoplasm you see something very much more wonderful than it seems. In fact, the great Napoleon himself owed his physical life to protoplasm, as did also Shakespeare and Plato, and every person who has ever lived, for protoplasm is the only living matter in the world.