The Organism and Its Cells 159 



refutable, against the (loctriiie of cell hegemony, though Carl 

 Rauber, Adam Sedgwick, O. Hertwig and a few otliers had 

 already become more or less positive dissenters from the 

 prevailing view. Whitman's studies on the initial embryonal 

 stages of bony fishes appears to have strongly Impressed 

 upon him the subordination of the cells to the general needs 

 of the develo})ing fish. "That the forms, assumed by the 

 embryo in successive stages are not dependent on cell-division, 

 may be demonstrated in almost any Qgg. Watch the ex- 

 pansion of the blastoderm in the pelagic teleost egg, the 

 formation of the germ-ring, and especially the axial con- 

 centration of material, which is so beautifully illustrated in 

 these eggs. Such developmental processes are, if I mistake 

 not, clearly indicative of some sort of organization." ^^ And 

 approaching the problem from a slightly different angle, 

 he says : "May we not go further, and say that an organism 

 is an organism from the egg onward, quite independently 

 of the number of cells present .^^ In that case, continuity of 

 organization would be the essential thing, while division into 

 cell-territories might be a matter of quite secondary im- 

 portance." ^^ 



It was the domination of cell division by forces other than 

 those belonging to the cells taken independently that especi- 

 ally held his Interest. "The more carefully we compare the 

 cleavage in different eggs, the more clear it becomes that the 

 test of organization in the egg does not lie in its mode of 

 cleavage, but in subtile formative processes. The plastic 

 forces heed no cell-boundaries, but mould the germ-mass re- 

 gardless of the way it is cut up into cells." ^'^ And he 

 clearly saw that to fly from cells to nuclei, there to seek 

 final explanatory refuge, as Sedgwick particularly had pro- 

 posed, was no more satisfactory than to stay with the 

 cells. 



"The essence of organization," he says, "can no more 

 lie in the number of nuclei than in the number of cells. The 



