200 INTERNAL FORM AND STRUCTURE OF CELL [ch. iv 



zerlegt, aber man kann es aus diesen nicht wieder zusammenstellen 

 und beleben;" the dictum of the Cellular fathologie being just 

 the opposite, "Jedes Thier erscheint als eine Summe vitaler 

 Einheiten, von denen jede den vollen CharaJcter des Lebens an 

 sich tragi." 



Hofmeister and Sachs have taught us that in the plant the 

 growth of the mass, the growth of the organ, is the primary fact, 

 that "cell formation is a phenomenon very general in organic 

 life, but still only of secondary significance." "Comparative 

 embryology" says Whitman, "reminds us at every turn that the 

 organism dominates cell-formation, using for the same purpose 

 one, several, or many cells, massing its material and directing its 

 movements and shaping its organs, as if cells did not exist*." 

 So Rauber declared that, in the whole world of organisms, "das 

 Ganze lief ert die Theile, nicht die Theile das Ganze : letzteres 

 setzt die Theile zusammen, nicht diese jenes|." And on the 

 botanical side De Bary has summed up the matter in an aphorism, 

 "Die Pflanze bildet Zellen, nicht die Zelle bildet Pflanzen." 



Discussed almost wholly from the concrete, or morphological 

 point of view, the question has for the most part been made to turn 

 on whether actual protoplasmic continuity can be demonstrated 

 between one cell and another, whether the organism be an actual 

 reticulum, or syncytium. But from the dynamical point of view 

 the question is much simpler. We then deal not with material 

 continuity, not with little bridges of connecting protoplasm, but 

 with a continuity of forces, a comprehensive field of force, which 

 runs through and through the entire organism and is by no means 

 restricted in its passage to a protoplasmic continuum. And such 

 a continuous field of force, somehow shaping the whole organism, 

 independently of the number, magnitude and form of the individual 

 cells, which enter, Kke a froth, into its fabric, seems to me certainly 

 and obviously to exist. As Whitman says, "the fact that physio- 

 logical unity is not broken by cell-boundaries is confirmed in so 

 many ways that it must be accepted as one of the fundamental 

 truths of biokgyj." 



* Journ. of Morph. viii. p. 653, 1893. 



•f Neue Grundlegungen zur Kenntniss der Zelle, Morph. Jahrb. vin, pp. 272, 

 3] 3, 333, 1883. 



I Journ. of Morph. ii, p. 49, 1889. 



