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CHAPTER IY. 

 THE BUILDING-STONES OF THE ORGANIC WORLD. 



IT often happens that long before patient research has 

 reached, at a snail's pace, a new goal of knowledge, genius 

 has attained it by the mere force of thought, by speculative 

 thinking. Goethe taught that " nothing that lives is an indi- 

 vidual but a plurality ; even in so far as it appears to us as 

 individual it remains an aggregation of living independent beings 

 which are alike in conception and disposition (Anlage), but may 

 in appearance become like or similar, unlike or dissimilar. These 

 beings are either originally correlated or they meet and become 

 united. They part and once more seek one another, and thus 

 effect an infinite production of every kind and on all sides. The 

 more imperfect a being is, the more alike or similar are these 

 parts to each other and the more alike are they to the whole. 

 The more perfect the being becomes, the more dissimilar become 

 the parts. In that case the whole is more or less like the parts, 

 in this the whole is dissimilar to the parts. The more similar 

 the parts are to each other, the less they are subordinated to 

 one another. The subordination of the parts indicates the more 

 perfect being." These words embody the views of the modern 

 naturalist, for they contain already the essential elements of the 

 cell-theory. 



What is life ? Every time that a great discovery has been 

 made in natural science there is new hope that a nearer approach 

 has been gained to this question which is all-important to the 

 mind of man. Never seemed the hope of solving the riddle of 

 life nearer its realization than when the invention of the micro- 

 scope opened new paths to scientific research. So overwhelmed 

 were the first investigators by all the wonders of this new world 

 of minutest organisms revealed by this remarkable instrument 



