1890.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 37 



throughout the organism, thus rendering the body in toto an indi- 

 vidual. What was formerly thought to be a cell is, in the pres- 

 ent view, a node of a reticulum traversing the tissue. * * * * 

 The living matter of the tissues exists mainly in the reticular 

 stage, and is interconnected without interruption throughout 

 the body." 



Again this at first very strange and, for some reason or another, 

 unwelcome doctrine receives support from the investigations of 

 botanists ; for, as Professor Goodale remarks, this protoplasmic 

 intercommunication between adjoining cells " has been shown 

 to be so widely true in the case of the plants hitherto investi- 

 gated, that the generalization has been ventured on that all the 

 protoplasm throughout the plant is continuous." The position 

 to which we have traced this matter is, then, that to the latest 

 biology, in any particular organism, a generally diffused and in- 

 terconnected substance, simple only in appearance under pres- 

 ent optical aids, has taken the place of the circumscribed, more 

 or less isolated and independent, and recognizably complex ves- 

 icle which was the physical basis of life to the science of fifty 

 years ago. In the words of Doctor Heitzmann, " according to 

 the former view, the body is composed of colonies of amciebae : 

 according to the latter, the body is composed of one complex 

 amoeba." 



Here we must pause to note briefly what effect this abolition, 

 of the cell-doctrine has had upon the conception of vitality. I 

 said at the beginning of my address that the protoplasmic theory 

 of life might be traced up-stream to a revolt against the belief 

 in a vital principle received into the organism as a whole, — not 

 evolved by its organs or parts. In other words, the newer ten- 

 dency was supposed to be distinctly materialistic, as against the 

 older faith which was plainly spiritualistic. According to the 

 earlier conception, every man was a doubly-refracted image, — a 

 bodily person overlying a spiritual person, — the one co-exten- 

 sive with the other. Substantially the same idea was extended 

 to the lower animals and to plants ; whatever the vitalizing 

 essence was, it was a whole, as the animal or the plant was a 

 whole. The manifestation of life in an organism was not looked 

 upon as an aggregate of the vital actions of minor parts, eman- 

 ating and radiating from them, but as a pervading principle re- 

 ceived into the parts, through the whole from without, as a 



