266 THE EVOLUTION OF CONTINUITY 



of the body tissues ; it has the characters of embryonic 

 tissue ; and as cell multiplication goes on there will be 

 no signs of approaching differentiation, for the growth is 

 uncontrolled, and the influences which guided the normal 

 evolution of the unnaturally arrested cells' original com- 

 panions do not now exist. The body does not expect this 

 new development, and its system of growth-control is in 

 all aspects adapted for mature differentiated tissues. Further, 

 while there is nothing to influence cell-character there is 

 also nothing to restrain the amount of cell-multiplication — 

 in the absence of special accidental factors. The tumour 

 cells are young, and youth will be served ; they invade, 

 push aside, crush and destroy the normal tissues which, 

 to all purposes permanently arrested, can offer no com- 

 petition. The growing mass spreads and infiltrates in all 

 directions ; in fact, a malignant tumour develops — in the 

 case pictured, a sarcoma. 



Such a tumour represents an organism unlike any 

 occurring in the normal living scale ; an organism, part 

 of the Individual, and living parasitically on the remainder 

 of the Individual. In it every cell lives for itself, and 

 performs no special function for the good of the tumour, 

 behaving just as if produced in discontinuity. 



Viewed as an organism — and it is clearly not a part 

 of the real Individual — the tumour is unique in Nature as 

 an example of ceU-growbh-in-Continuity with not the slightest 

 signs of cell-differentiation. The malignant tumour's Con- 

 tinuity is not therefore true, and normal cell-arrest is not 

 exhibited. This being so, one is justified in supposing that 

 our sarcoma's cells may go on multiplying until some form 

 of gamete is produced. This is only logical, for the original 

 tumour cells are part of the product of the original fertilised 

 ovum, and in the absence of arrest and differentiation they 

 are free to carry on their cycles to the end. 



And to carry our suggestion a stage further : the con- 

 jugation of the hypothetical " tumour gametes " should 

 give rise to a new tumour similar in characters to the parent 

 growth. Such a new tumour might start to grow alongside 

 of the original one, or " gametes " might be set free into 

 a lymph channel, or into the blood stream and thus be 

 carried to some distance where their conjugation would give 



