IV] OF THE CELL-THEORY 345 



of the mass, the growth of the organ, is the primary fact, that 

 "cell formation is a phenomenon very general in organic life, but 

 still only of secondary significance." "Comparative embryology,'* 

 says Whitman, "reminds us at every turn that the organism 

 dominates cell-formation, using for the same purpose one, several, 

 or many cells, massing its material and directing its movements 

 and shaping its organs, as if cells did not exist*." So Rauber 

 declared that, in the whole world of organisms, "das Ganze liefert 

 die Theile, nicht die Theile das Ganze: letzteres setzt die Theile 

 zusammen, nicht diese jenesf." And on the botanical side De Bary 

 has summed up the matter in an aphorism, "Die Pflanze bildet 

 Zellen, nicht die Zelle bildet Pflanzen." 



Discussed almost wholly from the concrete, or morphological 

 point of view, the question has for the most part been made to turn 

 on whether actual protoplasmic continuity can be demonstrated 

 between one cell and another, whether the organism be an actual 

 reticulum, or syncytium J. But from the dynamical point of view 

 the question is much simpler. We then deal not with material 

 continuity, not with little bridges of connecting protoplasm, but 

 with a continuity of forces, a comprehensive field of force, which 

 runs through and* through the entire organism and is by no means 

 restricted in its passage to a protoplasmic continuum. And such 

 a continuous field of force, somehow shaping the whole organism, 

 independently of the number, magnitude and form of the individual 

 cells, which enter hke a froth into its fabric, seems to me certainly 

 and obviously to exist. As Whitman says, "the fact that physio- 

 logical unity is not broken by cell-boundaries is confirmed in so 

 many ways that it must be accepted as one of the fundamental 

 truths of biology §." 



* Journ. Morph. viii, p. 653, 1893. 



t Neue Grundlegungen zur Kenntniss der Zelle, Morph. Jahrb. viii, pp. 272, 

 313, 333, 1883. 



X Cf. e.g. Ch. van Bambeke, A propos de la delimitation cellulaire, Bull. Soc. 

 beige de Microsc. xxiii, pp. 72-87, 1897. 



§ Journ. Morph. ii, p. 49, 1889. 



