AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 75 



are the general outlines of the structure, and this structure is 

 now on the whole to be conceived as formed material thrown up 

 by millions of germinal particles seated beneath or around it. 

 The entire surface of the skin, for example, is to be conceived 

 as so much formed material casing so many millions of germinal 

 particles that cluster over its inner surface. Vessels, again, in 

 similar illustration, are to be viewed as so many pipes and 

 pipelets, the solid canals of which are only the formed material 

 of innumerable germinal particles around them. In this way, 

 then, the germinal particles almost show as so many ]ivmg paving- 

 beetles constantly pushing up the continuity of the streets and 

 walls of the bone, skin, brain, that constitute man. But this 

 being so, is it possible to avoid realising to ourselves, and in a 

 very vivid manner, the absurdity of the pretensions of Mr 

 Huxley to materialise all the processes of the organism by 

 means of the microscope ? Why, of this organisation itself as 

 such that is, of the mechanical apparatus it presents to us 

 the microscope tells us nothing whatever. The microscope only 

 enables us to see a single paving-beetle, a single cell, a single 

 germinal particle in connection with more or less of its own 

 portion of formed material a single coral, so to speak, and 

 the polype that died into it : it tells us nothing whatever of the 

 vast machine which these polypes have all unconsciously built 

 up with their coral. The mighty and complex fabric of man is, 

 after all, despite its innumerable parts , a unity : all these parts 

 but go towards that unity, are sublated into it. Now, what of 

 all that does microscopic observation tell us? Why, simply 

 nothing. Myriads of miserable Egyptians carried stones to the 

 Pyramid ; but no microscopic watching of any one of these, 

 stone and all, would ever explain the Pyramid itself its many 

 to a one. So with the frame of man; on which, would we 

 understand it aright, it is infinitely more necessary to turn the 

 lens, so to speak, of an all-embracing telescope, than to turn 

 on its infinitesimal particles the minuteness of the microscope. 

 . . . It must be evident, indeed, that the microscopic particle 

 throws but small light on, so to speak, the telescopic whole. 

 Consider the supply of pabulum alone. If with that pabulum 

 the germinal particles build up individually the various units of 

 the machine, it is the machine itself, and as a whole, that 

 supplies that pabulum. Nay, it is the machine itself that 

 properly alone lives, that connects all particles, living or dead, 

 into a unity and purpose of which unity the particles them- 

 selves, whether living or dead, know naught. . . . The 

 probability is, then, that the germinal particles have little action 

 besides providing for the keeping up of the tissues, and that it 

 is on these tissues, for the most part, that the functions of the 

 single unity depend." 



