1895.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 347 



these efforts remind us unconsciously of the per-Virch- 

 owian period where they worked with less efficient acces- 

 sories; although we cannot fall back to that time, unequally 

 balanced in being rich in imagination and poorer in 

 knowledge, yet we have described a circuitous route, and at 

 the same time approached somewhat the views of an epoch 

 which knew only the central influences of strong power, 

 but had yet no idea of the decentralization of life. This 

 decentralization, the putting up of units of a lower order, 

 has always and in all natural sciences proved itself to be 

 the most effective lever of progress. What the atoms 

 are for the pysicist, the molecules for the chemist, the 

 cells are for us. Although their anatomy may be ever 

 so limited, we calculate with them and we think in them ; 

 and yet cellular pathology would not have taken such 

 unrestrained possession of our minds during the last 

 decade if it had not received a support of unknown 

 power in the teachings of karyokinesis. 



As the bulk of working power upon anatomical, yes, 

 we can well say upon microscopical ground, had thrown 

 itself upon the investigation of the wonderful play of the 

 nuclear threads, and finding here for the first time rules 

 and laws for a complicated substratum of propagation, 

 the importance of which daily became enlarged, the 

 independence of the single cell became established so 

 impressively and in so tangible a manner, and for 

 everyone who wished to see, as it had never been 

 before. 



Although the bacterial poisons, or auto-intoxicants, 

 may still under certain pathological conditions on the 

 one side, and chemotactic incidental peculiar juices on 

 the other, there may forcibly and without consideration 

 break in upon millions of cell individuals and claim the 

 field in the more quiet work of reconstruction at leasj,, 

 and also in the most varied disturbances, progressive 

 from the beginning, the faculty of propagation of the 



