Chapter IX 

 ORGANISISIS CONSISTING OF ONE CELL 



A. ADULT FORM AND STllUCTURE 



Remarks on the Conception of the Cell as ari Element ary 



Organism 



WE saw early in the chapter on The Organism and its 

 Cells that the cell may be advantageously looked upon 

 as an "elementary organism." The warrantableness of thus 

 regarding it as set forth by Carl Briicke, who first clearly 

 reached the perception, should be recalled. This conception is 

 warranted, Briicke said, by the fact that the cell possesses 

 an organization of another sort than that pertaining to its 

 molecular structure. While we may not subscribe to the 

 implication of his doctrine that the cell has an organization 

 wholly independent of its molecular structure, yet we must 

 endorse his conception that it has a structure genuinely 

 unique as contrasted witli tluit of any non-living body; and 

 must reckon the perception of this fact as a forward step 

 of first rate importance in biology. 



While we are now to devote a cha})ter to an inquiry into 

 that peculiar structure of the cell which justifies us in view- 

 ing it as an elementary organism^ we should recognize that 

 this discussion falls properly under the general head of 

 cell-theory taken in the comprehensive sense indicated in 

 chapter six. As there defined the cell-theory concerns itself 

 with the structure of the cell as well as with the participa- 

 tion of cells in the make-up of multicellular organisms. It 



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