“The earth itself, in the heated state, was itself an immense living organism, from which all living organisms existing at present are descended; all inorganic matter on the earth being merely the rejected excretions of the former living earth, while the living substance came more and more to resemble protoplasm.”

“Only when these combinations had in the course of time petrified on the earth's surface, i.e. died out, combinations of elements appeared which till then had remained in gaseous and liquid state, and which have gradually taken on the semblance of protoplasm, the foundation of everything living today. We, therefore, assert that motion is the beginning of life in the world, and that protoplasm is the residuum which must have been left over after the substances now regarded as inorganic had separated out on the cooled surface of the planet.”

“The fiery mass of the forming earth is the gigantic organism, and Preyer gives the name of ‘life’ to its rotatory movement (or gravitational energy). As it cooled down, the heavier metals (the dead inorganic masses) separated form it; from the rest of it were formed first simple and afterwards complex carbon-combinations, and finally albumin and plasm."