Attempt to Subordinate I'rntixtti. to Cell-Theory 295 



cells but strongly favors the supremacy of the organism. 

 Let us suppose, for example, a specially skillful technician 

 has isolated all the voluntary muscle cells of a cat and kept 

 them alive indefinitely. Would any cellular elementalist 

 be so courageous as to contend that the cells would under- 

 go the contractions coordinated in quantity, force and speed, 

 which are involved in the animal's crouch-and-spring to 

 catch a rat? But suppose such coordinated contraction 

 of the isolated cells should take place. How could the fact 

 be explained? Surely in no way that did not recognize 

 that they were merely doing under the new conditions what 

 they were accustomed to do under the old ; that, in other 

 words, in endowing them with the ability to perform these 

 contractions, the organism had also endowed them with 

 such a measure of independence of metabolic activity as to 

 enable them to keep up these operations after separation 

 from the organism. 



One of the most essential things toward putting ourselves 

 straight in theory as to the relation of the cell to the organ- 

 ism in unicellular beings, is to get straight on the relation of 

 the cells to the organism in multicellular beings. An in- 

 dispensable step toward this latter consummation is to re- 

 move from our thought and terminology the conception 

 which holds the meta/oa and metaphyta to be "cell-states," 

 "cell-colonies" or "cell aggregations," when these terms are 

 used as though the cells were originally independent enti- 

 ties. The embryology of the meta/oa furnishes overwhelm- 

 ing evidence that the egg is the organism in its one-celled 

 stage, and that cell-division during ontogeny is a resolution 

 of the organism into minute parts very much like one an- 

 other. 



Once we have gone this far in revising the cell-theory we 

 come to reali/e the \veiglitiness of the truth that the theory 

 was originally concerned with parts or elements of larger 

 plants and animals, and not with these organisms them- 



