338 



THE WORLD OF LIFE 



CHAP. 



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plex machine, the living organism, which is not only self- 

 repairing during the normal period of existence, but self- 

 renewing, self-multiplying, self-adapting to its ever-changing 

 environment, so as to be, potentially, everlasting. To do 

 all this, I submit, neither " life " nor " vital force " nor the 

 * unconscious " cell-soul " are adequate explanations. What 

 we absolutely require and must postulate is, a Mind far 

 higher, greater, more powerful than any of the fragmentary 

 minds we see around us — a Mind not only adequate to 

 direct and regulate all the forces at work in living 

 organisms, but which is itself the source of all those forces 

 and energies, as well as of the more fundamental forces 

 of the whole material universe. 



The necessity for some such far-reaching power and 

 directive agency will be even more apparent when we con- 

 sider the beautiful series of changes which occur in every 

 germ-cell of the higher animals (Metazoa) at the commence- 

 ment of growth into the perfect form, as detected by means 

 of a long series of observations by many embryologists, with 

 all the modern appliances of microscopic research, and 

 summarised in Professor A. Weismann's interesting volume 

 on The Germ-Plasm. 



I will first quote a general description of such a cell 

 from Professor Lloyd Morgan's Animal Life and Intelligence, 

 and then give the further details as shown in the plate of 

 diagrams from Weismann's book. (Fig. 110.) 



" The external surface of a cell is (usually) bounded by a film or 

 membrane. Within this membrane the substance of the cell is 

 made up of a network of very delicate fibres (the plasmogen), en- 

 closing a more fluid material (the plasm) ; and this network seems 

 to be the essential living substance. In the midst of the cell is a 

 small round or oval body, called the nucleus, which is surrounded 

 by a very delicate membrane. In this nucleus there is also a 

 network of delicate plasmogen fibres enclosing a more fluid plasm 

 material. At certain times the network takes the form of a coiled 

 filament or set of filaments, and these arrange themselves in the 

 form of rosettes and stars. In the meshwork of the net, as in the 

 coils of the filament, there may be one or more small bodies 

 (nucleoli), which probably have some special significance in the 

 life of the cell." 1 



1 Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 10. 



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