CHAPTER VI 



SOME PROBLEMS OF CELL-ORGANIZATION 



" Wir mussen deshalb den lebenden Zellen, abgesehen von der Molecularstructur der 

 organischen Verbindungen, welche sie enthalt, noch eine andere und in anderer Weise com- 

 plicirte Structur zuschreiben, und diese es 1st, welche wir mit dem Namen Organization 

 bezeichnen." BRUCKE. 1 



" Was diese Zelle eigentlich ist, dariiber existieren sehr verschiedene Ansichten." 



HACKEL.2 



THE remarkable history of the chromatic substance in the matura- 

 tion of the germ-cells forces upon our attention the problem of the 

 ultimate morphological organization of the nucleus, and this in its 

 turn involves our whole conception of protoplasm and the cell. The 

 grosser and more obvious organization is revealed to us by the micro- 

 scope as a differentiation of its substance into nucleus, cytoplasm, 

 and the like. But, as Strasburger has well said, it would indeed be a 

 strange accident if the highest powers of our present microscopes had 

 laid bare the ultimate organization of the cell. Briicke insisted more 

 than thirty years ago that protoplasm must possess a far more com- 

 plicated morphological organization than is revealed to us in the 

 visible structure of the cell, repeating, though without accepting, an 

 earlier suggestion of Henle's ('41) that the cell might be composed of 

 more elementary vital units ranking between the molecule and the 

 cell. Many biological thinkers since Briicke's time have in one form 

 or other accepted this conception, which indeed lies at the root of 

 nearly all recent attempts to analyze exhaustively the phenomena of 

 cell-life. Without attempting to follow out the history of opinion in 

 detail or to give any .extended review of the various theories, 3 it may 

 be pointed out that this conception was based both on theoretical 

 a priori grounds and on the observed facts of cell-structure. On the 

 former basis it was developed by Herbert Spencer 4 in his theory of 

 " physiological units " by which he endeavoured to explain the phe- 

 nomena of regeneration, development, and heredity ; while Nageli 

 ('84) developed on the same general lines his theory of micelles which 



* Elementarorganisinen<> 1861, p. 386. 



2 Anthropogenic, 1891, p. 104. 



3 For an exhaustive review see Yves Delage, La structure du protoplasma et les theories suf 

 Vheredite. Paris, 1895. * Principles of Biology, 1864. 



u 289 



