THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



homogeneous plasson or archiplasm-^that is to say, a 

 plasma-compound that was not yet differentiated into 

 outer cytoplasm and inner caryoplasm. The rise of this 

 chemical distinction — and the accompanying morpho- 

 logical division of cell-body and nucleus— was due to a 

 phyletic differentiation; it was the outcome of a very 

 early and most important division of labor. The hered- 

 itary matter gathered in the nucleus, the outer cell- 

 matter controlling the intercourse with the external 

 world. Thus, by this first ergonomy, the nucleus be- 

 came the vehicle of heredity and the cell-body the organ 

 of adaptation. Opposed to this view is the second, the 

 hypothesis which the founder of the cell-theory, Schlei- 

 den, had put forward— that the nucleus is the original 

 base of the cell, and the cell-body a secondary develop- 

 ment from it. This opinion (which, in the main, cor- 

 responds to that of Butschli) raises a number of 

 difficulties; as does also the third hypothesis, that the 

 unnucleated "protoplasm-body" (the outer cytoplasm- 

 body) is the original formation, and that the nucleus 

 arose secondarily by condensation and chemical modi- 

 fication of it. At the bottom, however, the difference 

 between the three hypotheses on the primary cytogene- 

 sis is not as great as it seems at first sight. However, I 

 am more inclined to adhere to the first ; it supposes that 

 the physiological and chemical differences between 

 nucleus and cell-body, which afterwards became so im- 

 portant, were not originally present. The phenomena 

 of caryolysis in indirect cell-division show us still how 

 close are the relations of the two substances. 



If the organic population of our planet has arisen 

 naturally, and not by a miracle, as Reinke and other 

 vitalists suppose, the earliest elementary organisms, 

 produced by the chemical process of archigony (spon- 

 taneous generation), could not be real nucleated cells, 

 but unnucleated cytodes of the type of the chromacea 



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