182 THE CELL-THEORY 



organisms, that the whole "individual" organism must be an 

 a gg re g ate f cells, and that the concept of individuality 

 applied to the organism is accordingly a logical fiction ? 

 And it is just upon this notion of the individuality of 

 the organism that the teleological concept is based. The 

 teleological view can perhaps not be completely refuted until 

 the adequacy of materialistic explanations has been finally 

 shown ; but it is certain that the most promising method for 

 research is the materialistic (p. 226). 



"We start out then from the assumption that the 

 basis of the organism is not a force acting according 

 to a definite plan ; on the contrary, the organism arises 

 through the action of blind and necessary laws, of forces 

 which are as much implicit in matter as those of 

 the inorganic world. Since the chemical elements in 

 organic Nature differ in no way from those of inorganic 

 Nature, the ground or cause of organic phenomena can 

 consist only in a different mode of combination of 

 matter, either in a peculiar mode of combination of the 

 elementary atoms to form atoms of the second order, or 

 in the particular arrangement of these compound molecules 

 to form the separate morphological units of the organism 

 or the whole organism itself" (p. 226). Accepting then 

 the materialistic conception of the organism, we have to 

 consider this further problem. Does the ground of organic 

 processes lie in the whole organism or in its elementary 

 parts? Translated into terms of metabolism note the 

 physiological point of view the question runs, are meta- 

 bolic processes the result of the molecular construction 

 of the organism as a whole, or does the centre of metabolic 

 activity lie in the cell? Is it the cell rather than 

 the organism that is the immediate agent of assimi- 

 latory processes? In the first alternative the cause of the 

 growth of the constituent parts lies in the totality of the 

 organism ; in the other alternative : " Growth is not the 

 result of a force having its ground in the organism as a 

 whole, but each of the elementary parts possesses a force 

 of its own, a life of its own, if you will ; that is to say, in 

 each elementary part the molecules are so combined as to 

 set free a force whereby the cell is enabled to attract new 



