THE MOVEMENT OF THE CELL. 



deed its central content. Will it stop? Hard- 

 ly at its present landing-place, one has to 

 think; the next investigator will divide again, 

 for such division is in him, in his conscious- 

 ness, as well as outside of him, in the object, 

 yea, in the spirit of the age. 



It is, therefore, significant, that many a 

 biologist has predicated already the ultimate 

 cellular unit beyond the cell as at present vis- 

 ible, yea, beyond the granule as the hypothe- 

 tical basis or source of Life. This tendency 

 is already found in Herbert Spencer's phy- 

 siological units and in Darwin's gemmules; 

 here too belong the biophors (Weismann), 

 the plastidules (Hackel), the bioblasts 

 (Beall), the biogens (Verworn), the pang ens 

 (De Vries), the idioblasts (Hertwig), and so 

 on indefinitely. Each investigator has a bent 

 for springing upon us a new name, so that 

 these names seem to be also moving toward 

 infinite diversity, like the cell. The above 

 designations are but a few samples out of 

 the lot, and they are already getting a little 

 aged. (See a longer list in Wilson's The 

 Cell, p. 291, where the author remarks that 

 his list is by no means complete and that the 

 above terms are shaded with different mean- 

 ings by their proposers, though all have the 

 one content and show the same trend of the 

 science. It may be added that the cited book 



