A CRITICISM OF THE CELL-THEORY. 145 
removed from the context, might be made to bear such an 
interpretation. I have questioned my pupils with regard to 
such passages, and I find that they do in fact put such an 
interpretation upon them. For instance, in Waller’s ‘ Intro- 
duction to Human Physiology’ the following passage occurs 
on page 2: “ The organism is a community; its individuals 
are cells; groups of its individuals are organs.” Here we 
have an example of the danger of the too free use of illustrative 
language. In every illustration there lurks a fallacy. The 
fallacy may not have been present to the mind of the author ; 
but if the illustration alone is used, without a lucid explanation 
of its meaning, the fallacy may be the one thing which im- 
presses itself ou the minds of his readers. In this case there 
is a fallacy in the analogy, so often made use of for purposes of 
popular exposition, between an organism and acommunity. If 
the analogy is used without the necessary reservations it leads 
to confusion, for the reader is only too prone to transfer to 
the organic unit the idea of the individual isolated man, who 
is the social unit. The organic unit may in some cases be 
individual and isolated, but in the great majority of instances 
it has lost, wholly or partially, its individuality, and is not 
isolated. It becomes a subordinate part of a higher individality, 
which in its turn may be subordinate to an individuality of a 
still higher order. This has been explained in the most lucid 
and masterly manner by Hackel, in his ‘ Allgemeine Anatomie 
der Organismen,’ published in 1866; and nobody who has 
carefully studied that work can fail to have a clear under- 
standing of the subject. Yet it is to Hackel that the doctrine 
of a cell-republic is often attributed! Clearly by those persons 
only who have not read his works. For he insists, over and 
over again, upon a distinction (which since the researches of 
Mr. Walter Gardiner no longer holds good) between the 
organisation of plants and that of animals, namely, that the 
special characteristic of plants lies in the preponderance of the 
perfected and differentiated individuals of the first order—the 
cells or plastids. ‘“ Der wesentliche tectologische Character 
der Pflanzen liegt in der vorwiegenden Ausbildung und Differ- 
VoL. 38, PART 1.—NEW SER. K 
