Chapter IX 

 ORGANISMS CONSISTING OF ONK CELL 



A. ADI'LT FORM AND STRUCTURE 



Hem-arks on the Conception of the Cell as an Elementary 

 Organism 



WE saw early in tin- chapter on The Organism and its 

 (Vlls that the cell may he advantageously looked upon 

 as an "elementary organism." The warrantableness of thus 

 regarding it as set forth by Carl Briicke, who first clearly 

 reached the perception, should be recalled. This conception is 

 warranted, Briicke said, by the fact that the cell possesses 

 an organization of another sort than that pertaining to its 

 molecular structure. While we may not subscribe to the 

 implication of his doctrine that the cell has an organization 

 wholly independent of its molecular structure, yet we must 

 endorse his conception that it has a structure genuinely 

 unique as contrasted with that of any non-living body; and 

 must reckon the perception of this fact as a forward step 

 of first rate importance in biology. 



While we are now to devote a chapter to an inquiry into 

 that peculiar structure of the cell which justifies us in view- 

 ing it as an elementary aryan'ism, we should recognize that 

 this discussion falls properly under the general head of 

 cell-theorv taken in the comprehensive sense indicated in 

 chapter six. As there defined the cell-theory concerns itself 

 with the structure of the cell as well as with the participa- 

 tion of cells in the make-up of multicellular organisms. It 



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