ON THE STRUCTURE OF CELLS 141 



everything depends. Its varieties of motion seem 

 to depend more upon the structure than the 

 structure does upon them. 



In this respect, however, so eminent a physiologist 

 as Max Verworn protests against the view that the 

 egg cell in the higher animals must have a more 

 complicated molecular structure than that of other 

 cells (quite a different thing). " Because a highly 

 complicated organism results from the microscopical 

 egg cell, it is thought that the molecular structure 

 of the latter must be highly complicated. I do not 

 doubt that it is complicated, but I deny the assump- 

 tion that it . is more complicated than the molecular 

 structure of any other cell. We have only to imagine 

 that the metabolism in the egg cell is continually 

 changing, never remaining the same for two consecu- 

 tive moments, so that each condition causes the 

 following condition, and is itself the outcome of the 

 one preceding it." 



Considering how close is the connection between 

 metabolism and change of form, each change in the 

 metabolic exigencies of the developing organism 

 must be responded to by a further and more 

 complicated structural change. The assumption of 

 greater complication of the molecular structure of the 

 original egg cell is thus entirely superfluous, he 

 adds, " These processes, however, are only brought 

 about because each atom, or group of atoms or 

 molecules, attracts, by chemical afiinity, other atoms, 

 groups of atoms or molecules, in a certain direction. 

 This causes a continual flow of matter, some atoms or 



