282 The Umiii of the Organism 



Uiat is, possess organs. 



That there may be no question as to the essential cor- 

 rectness of the statement that this conflict was primarily 

 one of theory, let us listen to Dujardin himself. "Among 

 the authors," he says, "who have written on the Infusoria, 

 some, as Leeuwenhoek, have attributed to these animals a 

 very complicated organization, while others, as Miiller, would 

 see only a glutinous homogeneous substance * (mera gela- 

 tina). This last opinion, adopted by Cuvier, Treviranus 

 and Oken, appeared henceforth the most probable, when 

 M. Ehrenberg came boldly forward in 1830 to show to the 

 learned world evidences which he believed he had found, 

 but which unfortunately no one else has been able to con- 

 firm, of a richness of organization of the Infusoria." ^ 



From this passage alone the inference could be drawn that 

 the difference between the two men was strictly one of ability 

 in observation — of what each was able to see when examining 

 very minute creatures. But another passage lets the cat 

 out of the bag. "M. Ehrenberg, who, guided by false anal- 

 ogies, has gone even beyond Leeuwenhoek in ascribing to the 

 Infusorians a prodigious wealth of organization, supports 

 himself on the principle that 'the ideas of size are relative 

 and are of little physiological importance.' This principle 

 is only a consequence of a preconceived idea of the unlimited 

 divisibility of matter. Now in supporting the absence of 

 all limitations to the divisibility of matter to be a law of 

 nature — and a mass of chemical and physical phenomena 

 seem to prove the contrary — that law would not suffice to 

 prove the possibility of a very complex organization beyond 

 a certain minimal limit of size ; for it is known that many 

 pliysical and dynamical phenomena are considerably in- 

 fluenced or even inhibited by molecular action when the 



* The original wording should he noted: "n'ji onf vovU'e le j^lns souvent 

 qu'une substance . . ." — the old familiar story of seeing what one wants 

 to see rather than what is actually hefore his eyes. 



