A Criticism of the Cell-Theory; being an Answer to Mr. Sedgwick's ...

A CRITICISM OF THE CELL-THEORY. 145
removed from the context, might be made to bear such an
interpretation. I have questioned my pupils with regard to
such passages, and I find that they do in fact put such an
interpretation upon them. For instance, in Waller's ' Introduction
to Human Physiology' the following passage occurs
on page 2: " The organism is a community; its individuals
are cells; groups of its individuals are organs." Here we
have an example of the danger of the too free use of illustrative
language. In every illustration there lurks a fallacy. The
fallacy may not have been present to the mind of the author;
but if the illustration alone is used, without a lucid explanation
of its meaning, the fallacy may be the one thing which impresses
itself on the minds of his readers. In this case there
is a fallacy in the analogy, so often made use of for purposes of
popular exposition, between an organism and a community. If
the analogy is used without the necessary reservations it leads
to confusion, for the reader is only too prone to transfer to
the organic unit the idea of the individual isolated man, who
is the social unit. The organic unit may in some cases be
individual and isolated, but in the great majority of instances
it has lost, wholly or partially, its individuality, and is not
isolated. It becomes a subordinate part of a higher individality,
which in its turn may be subordinate to an individuality of a
still higher order. This has been explained in the most lucid
and masterly manner by Hackel, in his ' Allgemeine Anatomie
der Organismen,' published in 1866; and nobody who has
carefully studied that work can fail to have a clear understanding
of the subject. Yet it is to Hackel that the doctrine
of a cell-republic is often attributed ! Clearly by those persons
only who have not read his works. For he insists, over and
over again, upon a distinction (which since the researches of
Mr. Walter Gardiner no longer holds good) between the
organisation of plants and that of animals, namely, that the
special characteristic of plants lies in the preponderance of the
perfected and differentiated individuals of the first order—the
cells or plastids. "Der wesentliche tectologische Character
der Pflanzen liegt in der vorwiegenden Ausbildung und DifFer-
VOL. 38, PAET 1.—NEW SEE.
K