288 The Ujiity of the Organism 



{})) Posifio7i of Huxley, R. Hertwig and Others 



The views of Huxley on the nature of organisms and cells 

 give him an interesting place among tliose who protest 

 against the current cellular interpretation of the protista. 

 After mentioning Vorticella, Caulerpa and "Roesel's Pro- 

 . teus," as organisms in which there is little or no histological 

 differentiation, he says : "It is true indeed that the difficulty 

 with regard to these organisms has been evaded by calling 

 them 'unicellular' — by supposing them to be merely en- 

 larged and modified simple cells ; but does not the phrase 

 'unicellular organism' involve a contradiction for the cell- 

 theory? In tlie terms of the cell-theory^, is not the cell sup- 

 posed to be an anatomical and physiological unity, capable 

 of performing one function only — the life of the organism 

 being the life of the separate cells of which it is composed? 

 and is not a cell with different organs and functions some- 

 thing totally different from what we mean by a cell among 

 higher animals? We must say that the admission of the 

 existence of unicellular organisms appears to us to be vir- 

 tually giving up the cell-theory for these organisms." ^ 

 While the argument Huxley is making differs in important 

 respects from that which we are developing, these statements 

 make it obvious that, as Dobell remarks, Huxley realized 

 "there was something wrong in the application of the cell 

 theory to the protista." We shall speak further of Huxley's 

 views in another connection. 



Even Richard Hertwig, staunch believer as he is in the 

 conforanity of the Protozoa to the "laws of cell-life," recog- 

 nizes that harm has been done by pushing the cell-theory 

 too hard in the interpretation of the protozoa. "A whole 

 series of instances," he writes, "show how the effort to subor- 

 dinate the protozoa to experiences with metazoan cells and 

 to adapt them to the straight-jacket scheme devised for 

 met(^zoan cells has led to errors," ^ 



