Vitality and Organizaiion of Protoplasm. 19 



division, and the same holds good for cross-sections of strands of idio- 

 plasm, which consist of manifold and divers groups or micellae. 



The cell-theory, Naegeli's original conception, is moreover virtually 

 abolished by his conceiving the idioplasm as constituting a network of 

 fasciculse, ramifying as a continuous substance throughout the entire 

 organism, and giving origin to the differentiated cells of the ontogenet- 

 ically developing organism. This can only take place, as he himself 

 asserts, by the specific micellar groups, which form the "Anlage" or 

 germs, giving rise to "the production of soma-plasm." We have here 

 no longer an elementaiy parent-cell, which proliferates by means of 

 successive self-divisions; all daughter-cells remaining autonomous 

 units in the aggregate, which is held to constitute the multicellular 

 organism. It is here, on the contrary, a continuous substance, consist- 

 ing of complex strands of divers miscellar groups, whose every cross- 

 section contains a full assortment of all micellar groups required to re- 

 produce the different structures of the complex organism; it is a definite 

 strand of such purely germinal substance, which from beginning to end 

 directs and operates in every respect the entire ontogenetic reproduction. 



The germ-cell, from which ontogenetic evolution takes its start, is then 

 no longer an elementary, self-dividing organism, but contains instead 

 idioplasm consisting of a full assortment of micellar groups, which have 

 as such to produce the diverse cellular structures of which they are 

 the "x\nlage" or germ. This conception of an idioplastic germinal 

 substance has been adopted by succeeding ontogenetic theories, which 

 likewise falsely believe themselves to be grounded in the cell-theory. 



Furthermore, by what imaginable means can in the course of onto- 

 genetic evolution definite sets of specific micellar groups, composing a 

 self-rounded cross-section of ontogenetically inactive idioplasm happen 

 to become separately active within the complex strand of which they 

 form a part, exactly in time and at the very place where required during 

 ontogenetic evolution? And how can a specific micellar group of idio- 

 plasm as "Anlage," or germ, evolve by self-division or otherwise the 

 specifically differentiated tissues, of which they are held to be the germs? 

 How can they, for instance, not being themselves of muscular or neural 

 consistency, produce muscular or neural tissue? It is clear that the en- 

 tire problem of ontogenetic evolution is here also transferred wholly un- 

 solved to hypothetical germs, consisting here of mysteriously originated, 

 developed and arranged groups of organic crystals, themselves lifeless 

 and ontogenetically inefficient. 



It follows from the few objections brought forward, to which many 

 more might be added, that Naegeli's mechanico-physiological inter- 

 pretation of "Autonome Vervollkommnung," or phyletic evolution by 

 means of intrinsic forces, and that of "Anlage,^' or ontogenetic repro- 

 duction by means- of specific groups of micellae, constituting the germs 

 of specifically differentiated tissues ; that these essential tenets of his 

 theory are untenable. And as some of the principal assumptions of the 



