THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 167 



seen how strongly many of our leading physiologists 

 and zoologists are in favour of the view that such a 

 definite form is no longer necessary for the display of 

 vital manifestations nay, it is a view which they 

 cannot do other than hold, now it has become a matter 

 of absolute knowledge that the lowest living things 

 far from being unicellular organisms are mere bits of 

 protoplasm, devoid of nucleus, devoid of cell-wall, 

 Proteus-like, changing in outline from moment to 

 moment. Whilst, therefore, fully alive to the great 

 service which Virchow has done to the cause of pa- 

 thology, by calling attention so forcibly to the import- 

 ance of a consideration of the inherent activities of 

 the tissue elements as factors in the nutritive processes, 

 whether healthy or morbid, we believe, nevertheless, 

 that he has pushed his doctrines to a perilous and 

 erroneous extreme. We feel it impossible and per- 

 chance he would now do the same to admit that 

 c the cell is really the ultimate morphological unit 

 in which there is any manifestation of life, and that 

 we must not transfer the seat of real action to any 

 point beyond the cell.' Then, too, the accumulated 

 weight of other evidence, of various kinds, makes 

 it impossible for us to agree with him in regard to 

 the doctrine that cells can only originate from division 

 or endogenous multiplication of pre-existing cells, that 

 they can never be evolved de novo out of homogeneous 

 blastemata 1 . Virchow's doctrine on this subject is 



1 ' Cellular Pathology,' p. 27. 



