114 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF TO-DAY 



the centre of life, the elementary organism, must 

 take limitation and correction from these wider 

 views. This has already been insisted upon by 

 many physiologists of insight for instance, by 

 Naegeli (see p. 30), by Sachs, and by Yochting. 



1 Cell formation,' declares Sachs (Physiology of 

 Plants, p. 73), ' is a phenomenon very general, it is 

 true, in organic life, but still only of secondary 

 significance ; at all events, it is merely one of the 

 numerous expressions of the formative forces which 

 reside in all matter, in the highest degree, however, 

 in organic substance.' ' Essentially, every plant, 

 however highly organized, is a continuous mass of 

 protoplasm, surrounded externally by a cell wall 

 and penetrated internally by numerous transverse 

 and longitudinal partitions.' 



My conception receives strong support from the 

 way in which Vochting set forth the relations of 

 the cell to the whole : 



1 Is the circumstance that a cell, separated from 

 the organism, is able to survive and build up the 

 whole again a proof of the independent life of the 

 cells while in the organism ? I believe it to be 

 only a proof that the life of the organism is always 

 dependent upon the cell, that the life is inherent 

 in the cell, and that the life of a compound 

 organism is merely the resultant of the vital 

 phenomena of its single cells ; but by no means 

 that the cell when isolated displays the same 

 functions as while it is a part of the organism. 

 The cell while in the organism and the cell 

 separated from the organism and self-sufficing, are 



