CELL-LIFE.. 1Q3 



aphorism that every cell springs from a cell, 

 from its like, and not from something inor- 

 ganic or non-cellular. Of course this corre- 

 sponds to another famous aphorism usually 

 attributed to Haller: All life comes of life, 

 or, in the Latin, omne vivum ex vivo. Similar 

 is the expression and also the thought when 

 applied to the egg (ex ovo). Now Virchow 

 has likewise Latinized his conception aphor- 

 istically in the phrase, Omnis cellula e cellula, 

 which has had a marvelous currency, stream- 

 ing through all biological literature since it 

 was uttered. Great, truly, is the might of the 

 aphorism when rightly forged; this equals, 

 perchance, in influence all the rest of Vir- 

 chow 's volumes, and he has not a few. Still 

 the same difficulty rises here which we found 

 in Biogenesis; it brings us up to that same 

 old chasm between the Inorganic and the Or- 

 ganic, and bids us look into it, perchance a 

 little more deeply and despairingly, and then 

 leaves us. For outside the cell, which is usu- 

 ally declared to be the first living thing by the 

 biologists, must be a stage preparatory to life, 

 which cannot be the protoplasm, since this 

 lies still inside the cell, and is a necessary con- 

 stituent of it. So Yirchow's aphorism Omnis 

 cellula e cellula, projects a pre-cellular mate- 

 rial of life (Protoliioticon], which is, indeed, 



