THE PRESENT POSITION OF CELL-THEORY. 117 



and say so in so many words, or they tacitly admit it by 

 their description of what they conceive cell-organisation to 

 be. They are dominated by the cell-theory. Mr. Adam 

 Sedgwick has recently said that the cell-theory is an incubus 

 which perverts the minds of biologists, whose minds are so 

 saturated with conceptions borrowed from the cell-theory 

 that they are unable to see anything else. I have else- 

 where found fault with this statement, but when the theories 

 of cell-organisation are considered, I must freely confess 

 that he has right on his side. Not only does the zoologist 

 believe "that the cell is the unit of structure, and that it 

 forms the basis of organisation in the metazoa," but he also 

 believes that some correlative of the cell forms the basis 

 of all organisation whatsoever. His eyes are " blinded to 

 the most patent facts" by ideas derived from the cell-theory, 

 and it is not too much to say that the theory does " obstruct 

 the way of real progress in the knowledge of structure ". 

 Whether consciously or unconsciously the believer in bio- 

 phors starts with ideas derived from the cell-theory, he 

 tacitly assumes the universal applicability of the proposition 

 that function presupposes structure, and he seeks to explain 

 the functions of protoplasm by attributing to it an organisa- 

 tion which in all essential characters is the equivalent of 

 the organisation of the metazoa. Since I have just shown 

 that there is no justification for transferring a generalisation 

 based upon experience to a region in which experience is 

 either wholly wanting or, if present, of a different kind, it is 

 hardly necessary for me to elaborate and show that it is 

 equally unjustifiable to attribute to the unknown a plan of 

 organisation identical in kind with the plan which we have 

 learnt by experience to recognise as the attribute of the 

 known. 



Some time ago I pointed out that there was a fallacy in 

 the word organism. 1 Whitman has ridiculed the statement, 

 yet the more I reflect upon it the more I am convinced 

 that the fallacy exists, and that it is in the highest degree 

 mischievous and misleading. By an organism we mean 



1 G. C. Bourne, " Epigenesis and Evolution," this journal, vol i., 1894. 



