CYTOLOGY. 



157 



where an associated cell-life, but an associat- 

 ed science of cell-life, with all its members 

 duly ordered and organized, is what has yet 

 to appear. 



Will man ever be able to control directly 

 this cell-life of plant and animal, and also 

 of himself? Indirectly he does so already. 

 At present he is occupied with finding out 

 this cellular existence and with formulating 

 some of its laws. But he would seem to be 

 on his way toward getting hold of its associa- 

 tive power, which has so many analogies to 

 his own. Cell-association intimates man-as- 

 sociation and is prophetic of it, and may be 

 taken as the primordial push towards it in 

 the movement of Life. Indeed each individ- 

 ual cell of the human organism, as the bearer 

 and propagator of past inheritances, is the 

 arena of conflict between transmitted traits 

 of millions of ancestors, especially if Life on 

 our planet reaches back a hundred million of 

 years. The cell, is, therefore, a brief abstract 

 of the man, his little eidolon, seeking to realize 

 association; yea, we may conceive it as an 

 image, condensed in the smallest space and as 

 yet undeveloped, of human society, of whose 

 institutions it is a far-away pre-figurement. 

 In fact, it is their actual living germ, which 

 is slowly to evolve into the structure of man 

 himself and then into his institutional world. 



