THE PRESENT POSITION OF CELL-THEORY. 113 



polycytial organism. Biitschli, in a short but very weighty 

 sentence, 1 brings forward the same argument that I have 

 just used in opposition to Altmann's theory of the part 

 played by granules in the vital processes of protoplasm. In 

 my judgment the argument as far as it goes is a sound 

 one, but I am aware that it does not altogether refute the 

 theory of biophors, but only that part of it which states that 

 as cells are to polycytial aggregates so are biophors to cells. 

 This refutation, however, seems to me to be a considerable 

 gain. For it enables us to apprehend that the structure or 

 constitution of the cell, whatever it may be, is not to be ex- 

 pressed in the same terms as the structure of the higher 

 organisms. 



It may be objected that nobody does express the 

 structure of the cell in such terms, but the objection does 

 not hold good. It is true that most authors are more 

 guarded in their expressions than Wiesner, and evade the 

 responsibility of declaring that the biophor is to the cell 

 as the cell is to the polycytial organism, by means of re- 

 servations, couched for the most part in terms so ambiguous 

 and even transcendental that the whole issue is involved in 

 an obscurity from which it seems hopeless to try to escape. 

 But these expedients are really of little use. The fact re- 

 mains that in every case the fundamental idea is the same, 

 that the phenomena exhibited by isolated cells having an 

 independent individual existence are of essentially the same 

 kind as the phenomena exhibited bypolycytial organisms and 

 must be explained on the same grounds. 



If it be not so, what is the meaning of the argument 

 which was first put forward in definite shape by Brlicke, 

 and has been repeated by every author who attacks the 

 question in the same manner that he did, that the com- 



1 " So long as the individual constituents of the cell are not seen to 

 persist when isolated, nor are distinct living phenomena observed in them, 

 it is very dangerous to speak of their life as something which they possess 

 in themselves. They are so far living, as long as the opposite is not proved, 

 in that they are parts of living organism, so that the granula may be 

 living in the same way as the nucleus, even though they no longer betray 

 any sign of life after isolation" (Joe. eit., p. 199). 



8 



