42 JOURNAL OF THE [April, 



Schleiden and Schwann, has gradually faded away. Such cells 

 as they actually saw, do, indeed, still exist ; but the cells they 

 thought they saw have been deprived of all that were by them 

 considered essentials. The attention of the defenders of the 

 cell doctrine has been forced from cell-wall to nucleus, from 

 nucleus to nucleolus, from nucleolus to plastids, from plastids to 

 germinal points ; a mathematical reduction to mere position 

 without dimension ; — a subjective conception, not an objective 

 realization. Parenchyma cells in plants, and epithelial cells in 

 animals, are no less constituent rooms in an organic building 

 than they formerly were ; but to the later science they are not 

 the fundamental, autonomous units they were to the earlier 

 science. Fifty years ago such cells as these stood upon the 

 horizon of biological insight. To-day our vision extends far 

 beyond them. To-morrow it will doubtless reach to distant 

 points now even unimagined. At any rate, it is safe to say that, 

 in the present condition of science, we have no actual knowledge 

 of an ultimate unit, either physical 'or physiological. Science, 

 nevertheless, like the youth in search of the gold at the end of 

 the rain-bow, is ever pressing forward to fancied finalities, only 

 to find new starting-points for a continuation of the race. 



Second, no one has ever really seen Doctor Beale's ideal living 

 matter. What he saw and called bioplasm was simple enough, 

 compared with Dujardin's sarcode ; but, like sarcode, his bio- 

 plasm has proved to be exceedingly complex. At this moment 

 the idea embraced in his designation, oenninal i/iatier, is applic- 

 able, if to any actually visible thing, to a mere skeleton of his 

 original bioplasm. Next year it may be applicable to only a 

 small part of this attenuated reticulum ; — and so on ad infinitum. 



Third, Huxley's physical basis of life is pushed ahead again 

 into the realm of the imagination. There probably is a physical 

 basis, but it is not the particular basis Professor Huxley had in 

 view ; because the protoplasm of the nettle-sting, the i)rotoplasm 

 of the globergerina, and the protoplasm of the blood-corpuscle 

 are clearly proven to be different protoplasms, chemically as 

 well as physically and physiologically. Moreover, it is pretty 

 certain that one protoplasm cannot be converted into another, 

 except through the process of dying, becoming pabulum, being 

 decomposed by fermentation, converted into new compounds 

 and appropriated and assimilated ; — which is a somewhat compli- 



