SCIENTIFIC FAITH ONCE MORE 



produced homogeneous plasma-granules. As these 

 grew they divided, to form still larger plasma-gran- 

 ules of a homogeneous character, and the result is 

 what he calls the Tnonera, — the first bit of living 

 unorganized matter, a cell without nuclei. 



Out of this monera, by surface strain and chemi- 

 cal differentiation and other obscure processes, that 

 wonder, the nuclear cell, arose — the architect of all 

 living things on the globe. Our bodies, and the bod- 

 ies of all other living beings, are simply multipH- 

 cations of cells, all fundamentally the same, — the 

 work of a complex microscopic mechanism that seems 

 to know from the start the part it is to play in the 

 world, and proceeds to build all the diversities of 

 living forms that we know; but why, in the one case, 

 it builds a flea, or a cat, or a monkey, or a man, and 

 in another a flower, or a pine, or an oak, Haeckel's 

 exposition does not help us to understand. 



Do we know of anything in the laws of matter and 

 force, as we see them in the non-living world, that 

 would lead us to expect such novel results? Why 

 the cell should build anything, since the colony of 

 living cells that Dr. Carrel has kept going for a 

 year or more builds nothing, but only multiplies its 

 units, is a question which Haeckel's chemistry and 

 physics will never be able to answer. 



"The organs of a living body," he says, "perform 

 their functions chiefly by virtue of their chemical 

 composition." Undoubtedly, but what made it a 

 173 



