140 THE STORY OF LIFE'S MECHANISM. 



consisting of a large number of separate inde- 

 pendent cells, consists of one great mass of living 

 matter which is aggregated into little centres, 

 each commonly holding a nucleus. Such a con- 

 clusion is not yet demonstrated, nor is its sig- 

 nificance very clear should it prove to be a fact ; 

 but it is plain that such suggestions quite 

 decidedly modify the conception of the body as 

 a community of independent cells. 



There is yet another line of thought which is 

 weakening this early conception of the cell 

 doctrine. There is a growing conviction that 

 the view of the organism, simply as the sum of 

 the activities of the individual cells, is not a 

 correct understanding of it. According to this 

 extreme position, a living thing can have no 

 organization until it appears as the result of cell 

 multiplication. To take a concrete case, the egg 

 of a starfish can not possess any organization 

 corresponding to the starfish. The egg is a 

 single cell, and the starfish a community of cells. 

 The egg can, therefore, no more contain the 

 organization of a starfish than a hunter in the 

 backwoods can contain within himself the organi- 

 zation of a great metropolis. The descendants 

 of individuals like the hunter may unite to form 

 a city, and the descendants of the egg cell may, 

 by combining, give rise to the starfish. But 

 neither can the man contain within himself the 

 organization of the city, nor the egg that of the 

 starfish. It is, perhaps, true that such an ex- 

 treme position of the cell doctrine has not been 

 held by any one, but thoughts very closely 

 approximating to this view have been held by 



