THE CELL AND THE PHILOSOPHERS. 89 



the advocates and partisans of the new doctrines carried 

 to a legitimate issue, or possibly somewhere beyond, it 

 may be truly said, " the cry is still, They come." 



Like all the early observers of " the cell," Goodsir 

 met with difficulties. Granted a cell, with its walls, 

 its contents, its nucleus and nucleolus, what then? 

 Did the formation of cells depend on an endogenous 

 or exogenous growth, a fissiparous division, or a gem- 

 miferous thrusting forth of new cells or materials ? 

 Theory often ran in advance of observation, and Good- 

 sir, too anxious for a foremost place in the race of com- 

 petition, went boldly onwards ; for, with too many of 

 that period, instead of comparing microscopic observa- 

 tion with the data furnished by the test-tube and the 

 philosophical balance, the desire was to be able to cry 

 "Eureka!" before your neighbour. This mode of pro- 

 cedure could excite no surprise; histology was an 

 almost untrodden field, the explorers of which were 

 enthusiastic and impressionable. The new develop- 

 mental anatomy attracted dilettanti and idealists, 

 as well as the legitimists in science, and came to be 

 viewed in the highest light as an Archimedean lever to 

 the biological world — a consummation devoutly to be 

 wished by the physicist, physiologist, and positivist, 

 ;ill of whom took part in the discussion of a subject 

 thai seemed specially to concern the anatomist alone. 

 The geometrician saw the fundamental form of nature 

 represented in the cell ;i hollow spheroid or ellipsoid; 

 the physiologisl would have it dial all the processes 

 engaged in the vital Functions resl upon a combination, 



