THE BIOLOGY OF THE CELL SURFACE 



Nature is both continuous and corpuscular. In the 

 former sense, we pass from lower to higher revelations of 

 organization almost insensibly and with scarcely a break. 

 Every form of matter follows upon another. In the latter 

 sense, we recognize breaks in natural states from electron 

 to atom, from atom to molecule, from molecule to com- 

 pound, and from compounds in association to living matter. 

 But even conceived of as corpuscular, matter, as we know it, 

 is never purely discrete and absolutely independent from 

 the remainder of nature. Whether we study atoms or 

 stars or that form of matter, known as living, always must 

 we reckon with inter-relations. The universe, however 

 much we fragment it, abstract it, ever retains its unity. 



The Q^g cell also is a universe. And if we could but 

 know it we would feel in its minute confines the majesty 

 and beauty which match the vast wonder of the world 

 outside of us. In it march events that give us the story 

 of all life from the first moment when somehow out of 

 chaos came life and living. That first tremendous upheaval 

 that gave this earth its present contour finds its counter- 

 part in the breaking up of the surface of the egg which 

 conditions all its life that is to follow. The sundering of 

 the egg into many parts, to be woven again into a whole 

 is no less wonderful than the breaking up of the primeval 

 unit out of which the sun and the stars, the earth and the 

 moon were made separate and brought together again in 

 the pattern of the heavens and the earth. 



The lone watcher of the sky who in some distant high 

 tower suddenly saw a new planet floating before his lens 

 could not have been more enthralled than the first student 

 who saw the spermatozoon preceded by a streaming bubble 

 moving toward the egg-centre. And as every noviate in 

 astronomy must thrill at his first glance into the world of 

 stars, so does the student to-day who first beholds this 

 microcosm, the egg-cell. For the student of Nature there 



368 



