RETROGRESSION IN POWER. 



yet every kind of germinal matter exhibits powers of 

 infinite growth.* 



When bioplasm or germinal matter lives faster 

 than in health, in consequence of being supplied with 

 an undue proportion of nutrient material, a morbid 

 bioplasm results ; and if the process continues for a 

 short time, changes familiar to those conversant with 

 pathological alterations occur upon a large scale. 



Of Retrogression in Formative Power. In discuss- 

 ing questions of this kind, involving such minute 

 details, we must be most careful to avoid too hasty 

 generalization, and must proceed by very slow steps. 

 This is more particularly necessary if it so happens that 

 our inferences in some measure accord with the views 

 of speculative arid enthusiastic persons, who are always 

 fancying that we are on the eve of some grand dis- 

 covery which is to revolutionize thought. Many, from 

 a consideration of the arguments I have advanced, 

 would perhaps be led to look with favour upon the 

 doctrine that the lowest living forms are capable of 

 being produced by the retrograde development of 

 higher forms, and that bioplasm even very high in the 



* While, however, the process of division is proceeding, as has been 

 described, in some cases a small portion of the germinal matter does 

 not undergo division into masses of the next series, Taut retains its primi- 

 tive powers. This remains in an embryonic condition after the tissue 

 has been formed, and thus the development of new tissue, even in 

 advanced life, is, in some cases, not only possible, but actually occurs. 

 Many cancers and other morbid growths probably originate in these 

 masses of embryo bioplasm which remain for a long time in a quiescent 

 state embedded in some of the fully -formed textures of the adult. 



