EVIDENCE PROVING THE STATEMENT OF THE CASE 111 



to " growth/' and that in favour of waste to decom- 

 position and " death." When, as we shall presently see, 

 the dominant controlling molecule, the commander-m- 

 chief, ceases to control the organism of cells, we have, 

 what we call, death, but not eternal death. 



" The body is a machine of the nature of an army, 

 not that of a watch or of a hydraulic apparatus. Of 

 this army each cell is a soldier, an organ a brigade, 

 the central nervous system head-quarters and field 

 telegraph, the alimentary and circulatory system the 

 commissariat. Losses are made good by recruits born 

 in camp, and the life of the individual is a campaign, 

 conducted successfully for a number of years, but with 

 certain defeat in the long run. 1 The efficacy of an 



1 "It is especially necessary to conceive the cell as an integral 

 organism, or, in other words, an independent living being. When by 

 dissection we have separated the developed body of a Man, or of any 

 other animal or plant, into its organs, and when we then proceed 

 further to examine by means of the microscope the more minute con- 

 stituents of these larger organs, which give the form to the whole 

 organism, we are surprised to find that all these various parts are made 

 up of the same fundamental constituents or structural elements ; and 

 these are cells. ... it is only in the earliest period of individual 

 existence that the organism is a simple cell ; it afterwards forms a cell- 

 society, or, more correctly, an organized cell-state. The human body 

 is not in reality a simple life-unit, as is at first the universally current, 

 simple belief of men. It is, rather, an extremely complex social 

 community of innumerable microscopic organisms, a colony or a state, 

 consisting of countless independent life-units, of different kinds of 

 ce ll s< _( The Evolution of Man," Prof. Ernst Haeckel, 1883, vol. i. 

 pp. 123, 124.) 



" A living body is not merely a homogeneous mass of living 

 matter ; the living matter or protoplasm has become differentiated 

 and organised, and it has surrounded itself with protoplasm products. 

 The lowest form of living matter is a simple cell, e.g. an amoeba or a 

 leucocyte. The highest form of living matter is the human body, 



