ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 425 



organism as Haiiy attempted to build up crystals out 

 of his " molecules integrantes." The most elaborate an- 

 alysis of this conception is put forward in the ' Micellar 

 Theory ' of the celebrated botanist Na'geli, which in 

 Germany has found favour with many eminent bio- 

 logists as a provisional programme of the various 

 problems involved. It is clear that the conception of 

 the physiological unit opens out two distinct lines of 

 research. We can approach it on the one side by 

 artificially producing in the chemical laboratory more 

 and more of those chemically stable compounds which 

 we find in the living organism. After Wb'hler had 35. 



Synthesis of 



produced urea artificially in 1828, the number of s 

 these artificial syntheses greatly increased, and we are 

 specially indebted to M. Berthelot for having shown 

 how all the simpler chemical compounds contained in 

 the organism can be put together by inorganic processes. 

 Some of the more complex substances have likewise 

 subsequently yielded to this synthetic method. " It is 

 possible," we are told, " that after a time our know- 

 ledge of chemistry may have advanced sufficiently to 

 enable us to produce albuminous bodies artificially by 

 synthesis." l " We are already able artificially to build 

 up, atom for atom, out of their elements a series of 

 organic compounds, some of a very complicated char- 

 acter. We no longer doubt that all the rest, even 

 the most complex, will be thus produced ; it is only 

 a question of time." 2 But the ways in which the 



16. 



1 See O. Hertwig, 'The Cell,' p. Chemistry,' transl. by Wooldridge, 



See G. Bunge, ' Physiological 



p. 313. 



