26 Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm. 



Somehow^ then, the widely differing cells of multicellular organisms, 

 when conceived in accordance with the cell-theory as autonomous be- 

 ings, have to be all germinally represented in the reproductive cell. 

 Hence Spencer's multifoldly polarized physiological units, Darwin^s 

 specifically differentiated gemmules, Haeckel's memory-endowed plasti- 

 duies, Naegeli's intrinsically developing micellar groups, De Trie's in- 

 tracellurally competing pangenes, Weismann's nutritively differentiated 

 and diversely grouped biophores, etc. 



But by supposing the germ-cell, and still more by supposing the nu- 

 clear germ-plasm to be composed of differentiated elementary units, 

 through whose multiplication and grouping the adult organism is con- 

 structed, you not only completely destroy the autonomous and elemen- 

 tary nature of the germ-cell itself, as defined by the cell-theory ; but you 

 dissipate during ontogenetic evolution the entire cell-theory, from which 

 the evolutional start was so confidently made. For each kind of cell 

 that composes the adult organism can then be nothing but a cluster of 

 the multiplied particular units, by which it was representatively pre- 

 formed in the germinal substance. 



Furthermore, the difficulty in the way of explaining by what means 

 the vital units, supposed to compose the germ-plasm, have become so 

 widely 'differentiated and diversely developed as now to be able to re- 

 produce entirely different and more highly endowed cell-generations; 

 this difficulty proves to be insuperable. For it is scientifically incon- 

 ceivable how the originally equal units held- to have composed the pri- 

 mordial mother-cell, all exposed to the same nutritive conditions, can 

 have by any known, or legitimately inferred means come to be so widely 

 differentiated and so highly evolved, as the theory demands. And if the 

 varied external influences or stimuli, to which successive cell-genera- 

 tions have been exposed, are here invoked to account for their differen- 

 tiations, then Darwin's untenable hypothesis of pangenesis is logically 

 necessitated; each externally differentiated cell has therewith to emit 

 germinal representatives, definite assortments of Avhich have by some 

 wholly unaccountable means to be collected within the reproductive 

 cells. And this, surely, is a scientifically inadmissible assumption. 



As to Haeckel's substituted hypothesis of perigenesis, by which he 

 seeks to explain the progressive differentiations of ontogenetic evolution, 

 it was found to be really based, not — as he contends — on the drastically 

 unscientific hylozoic assumption of memorized wave-motions of the 

 plastidules, but on their supposed differentiation of chemical constitu- 

 tion. At any rate, no less than in Darwin's ]iangenesis have distinct 

 representatives of the diversely constituted cells of the adult organism 

 to find their way into the germ-cell, which would necessitate super- 

 natural intervention; for never could they, unaided by some Deus ex 

 machina, reach their appointed destination. 



Moreover, the differentiated and highly evolved ultrainieroscopioal 

 units here hypothetically assumed have to multiply in prodigious num- 

 bers in order to build up the comparatively enormous bulk of the adult 



