i8S2.] Organic Physics. 653 



complete their molecular generalization and be prepared for excre- 

 tion from the body by the reproductive glands, as the germs of 

 independent organisms. 



A brief re-statement of the hypothesis here advanced may not 

 be amiss. The human body is a colony of cells arranged into 

 organized tissues. Each cell individually considered pursues its 

 life process independently of all others. Its life duty is simply 

 to assimilate nutriment, grow, and to produce daughter cells with 

 the same functions. The life duty of the whole body is the 

 same, to assimilate nutriment, to grow, and to produce daughter 

 cells capable of going through the same process. And these 

 functions as performed by the individual cells are the bases of 

 the same functions as performed by the whole body. Thus the 

 body has a double duty to perform, to subserve the ends of indi- 

 vidual life by growth, and those of race life by reproduction. 

 Coherence of the newly budded cells is the organic agency in 

 the former, freedom of these new cells in the latter. And as each 

 cell is adapted to perform both these duties, so is the body as a 

 whole. It has two complete and separate vascular systems, one 

 devoted to the duty of nutrition of the coherent cells, the other 

 to the nutrition of the free cells. The free cells live their life as 

 independent offspring of the fixed cells. It has also two systems 

 of glands devoted to these two duties ; the ordinary blood gland 

 is devoted to eliminating impurities from the blood, elaborating 

 special nutriment, aiding in digestion and otherwise subserving 

 the nutrition of the body; the lymphatic or closed gland per- 

 forms the same duty for the leucocytes ; and each system of ves- 

 sels aids the duty of the other; the lymphatics by bringing the 

 nutriment into direct contact with the tissues ; and the blood 

 vessels by their glandular aid to the nutrition of the leucocytes. 

 The action of the glands is probably little more than one of re- 

 tardation, and the bringing of the elements which enter them 

 into close contiguity. No doubt the leucocytes assimilate mate- 

 rial in the open vessels, but this takes place much more rapidly in 

 the glands. And if the red blood cells are merely devitalized 

 leucocytes, then their disappearance in the spleen may signify an 

 assimilation of their molecules by the leucocytes. Thus the latter 

 become more and more generalized in constitution as they absorb 

 molecules originating in the cells of every portion of the body ( 

 and they finally reach the reproductive glands as complete molec- 

 ular representatives of the body. 



