54 Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm. 



the most eminent biological investigators has proved logically tenable 

 in its explanatory assumptions. And even when these are granted, no 

 such theory has or can efficiently explain the fundamental phenomena 

 of vitality, motility, assimilation, growth and reproduction. 



THE UNITY OF THE ORGANIC INDIVIDUAL. 



Visible appearances to the contrary, undeniable facts are forcing in- 

 vestigators to look upon the morphological configuration of so-called 

 multicellular organisms, as the functionally specified structure of a 

 unitary protoplasmic whole. And more and more is it becoming evi- 

 dent that no aggregation of separate units can, save by miraculous inter- 

 vention, arrange themselves in space so as to form and actuate the inter- 

 dependent organs and functions of the complex organism.* 



Leading botanists have already acknowledged the unity of the or- 

 ganic individual. Strasburger in his inaugural address as rector of his 

 university, 1891, p. 16, says : Until recently it was accepted that there 

 existed no communication between the plasma of plant-cells. It had 

 to be asked how under such conditions is the co-operation of the sundry 

 cells in the service of the organism as a whole at all possible, and how 

 can the plant as a unitary being be thus formed. The problem found 

 its solution in the discovery that the plasm of the different cells is con- 

 nected by protoplasmic filaments. These traverse from cell to cell and 

 cause thus the living substance of a plant tQ be continuous. The plant, 

 therefore, like the animal, constitutes a unitary living organism." 

 r~Pfeffer "Die Entwicklung-" 1895. arrives at the conclusion that: "All 

 I cells are correlated pieces of the whole uninterruptedly connected pro- 

 L.toplasmic body." And Vines in his address as President of the Botan- 

 ical Section of the British Association, 1900, feels justified in de- 

 •■"'claring: "The general and perhaps universal continuity of the proto- 

 plasm in cellular plants has been established. Hence the body is no 

 longer regarded as an aggregate of cells, but as a more or less septated 

 mass of protoplasm." 



It now devolves upon zoologists to harmonize the apparent multicel- 

 lular structure of animals with their real indiscerptible unity. Here 

 «lso the continuous consistency of the protoplasmic structure is evinced 

 by established, and by newly forming, protoplasmic bridges ensuring the 

 vital intercommunication of the contents of cells. According to the 

 observations of H. Sedgwick Quart. Journal of Micr., Science, v, xxvi, 

 1886, all cells are during ontogenetic evolution as well as during adult 

 life in protoplasmic intercommunication. Frommann in the article 

 "Zelle," Eeal-Encyklopsedie der Gesammten Neilkunde, 1890, sums up 

 the then attained knowledge regarding cells in the following words: 

 "We can no longer, as was formerly the case, regard the body as being 



y *Sec "Mind," -Taiiuary, 1880, "The Dfpondcneo of Quality on Specific Ener- 



\ gies," a paper writtci\ to oppose Lewes' and Wundt's theory of "Functional In- 

 difference," and wherein is proved the impossibility of autonomous units to com- 

 bine their efficiencies without a combining medium. 



