EXTRACT XXVII. B. 



ON THE CELL, IN SOME OF ITS INTRINSIC, INDI- 

 VIDUAL, AND COMMUNAL, ASPECTS, AND IN THE 

 GENESIS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



To the cell is now assigned a functional role, embracing 

 the initiation, and evolution, of all vital phenomena, 

 whether nutritive, developmental, or perpetuative. From 

 the origin of the fecundated ovum, and parent cell body, 

 until the termination of the communal cell life of the 

 individual unally, or sympathetically, innervated organism 

 to which it gives rise, one unbroken cell developmental 

 process prevails, which only terminates by death, and 

 dissolution ; the life history of the organism is, therefore, 

 made up of a succession of cell growth, and division, 

 of re-cell growth, and re-division, in unbroken continuity 

 from the date of origin of the parent cell, to that of 

 the last generation of its successive cells, when failure 

 of vital energy, to maintain the required vital material 

 conditions of the organism's cell community, ensues. 



The essential condition, or principle, underlying, and 

 determining that every cell is preceded by a parent cell, 

 except the systemic nerve cell, and that every cell which 

 does not perpetuate, or reproduce itself, cannot, in conse- 

 quence, exist in perpetuity, but hence must perish, or 

 terminate its line of descent, when it has lived its own 

 individual life. 



The cell that manages, by gemmation, or kariokinesis, 

 to perpetuate itself, ensures the continuation of itself, 

 in the new cell genesis, with all its attributes, modified, 

 and fitted, by altering environment, to secure its 



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