106 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



powers of repair generally, and the fact of the 

 development of one or three blastomeres into per- 

 fect organisms, all point to the faculty of re- 

 generation being " a primary power of living 

 creatures " ; and the results of these investigations 

 are regarded by them as being absolutely incom- 

 patible with the theories concerning biophores and 

 determinants promulgated by Weismann. 



Oscar Hertwig * holds with Nageli that the 

 idioplasm has a micellar structure, and that it is 

 distributed equally to every product of cell-division ; 

 and such views are quite compatible with those 

 urged by Herbert Spencer in opposition to the 

 complicated theories and hypotheses of Weis- 

 mann. 2 The forms of lower organisms are, in 

 short, now by an increasing number of workers 

 and thinkers regarded as in each case due to the 

 necessary interactions between the particular kind 

 of protoplasm (the isomeric varieties of which are 

 absolutely innumerable) and the chemical and physi- 

 cal influences operative in its medium, tempered 

 by the mutual interaction of the parts in their 

 varying relations to the whole. 



The de novo origin of a simple cell is now seen 



1 Allgemeine Biologie, Dritte Auflage, 1908. 



2 Principles of Biology, vol. i., 1898, Appendix B. 



