But if the cell acts, after this fashion, as a whole, each part interacting of necessity with the rest, the same is certainly true of the entire multicellular organism: as Schwann said of old, in very precise and adequate words, “the whole organism subsists only by means of the reciprocal action of the single elementary parts[256].”
As Wilson says again, “the physiological autonomy of the individual cell falls into the background ... and the apparently composite character which the multicellular organism may exhibit is owing to a secondary distribution of its energies among local centres of action[257].”
It is here that the homology breaks down which is so often drawn, and overdrawn, between the unicellular organism and the individual cell of the metazoon[258].
Whitman, Adam Sedgwick[259], and others have lost no opportunity of warning us against a too literal acceptation of the cell-theory, against the view that the multicellular organism is a colony (or, as Haeckel called it (in the case of the plant), a “republic”) of independent units of life[260]. As Goethe said long ago, “Das lebendige ist zwar in Elemente {200} zerlegt, aber man kann es aus diesen nicht wieder zusammenstellen und beleben;” the dictum of the Cellularpathologie being just the opposite, “Jedes Thier erscheint als eine Summe vitaler Einheiten, von denen jede den vollen Charakter des Lebens an sich trägt.”
Hofmeister and Sachs have taught us that in the plant the growth of the mass, the growth of the organ, is the primary fact, that “cell formation is a phenomenon very general in organic life, but still only of secondary significance.” “Comparative embryology” says Whitman, “reminds us at every turn that the organism dominates cell-formation, using for the same purpose one, several, or many cells, massing its material and directing its movements and shaping its organs, as if cells did not exist[261].” So Rauber declared that, in the whole world of organisms, “das Ganze liefert die Theile, nicht die Theile das Ganze: letzteres setzt die Theile zusammen, nicht diese jenes[262].” And on the botanical side De Bary has summed up the matter in an aphorism, “Die Pflanze bildet Zellen, nicht die Zelle bildet Pflanzen.”
Discussed almost wholly from the concrete, or morphological point of view, the question has for the most part been made to turn on whether actual protoplasmic continuity can be demonstrated between one cell and another, whether the organism be an actual reticulum, or syncytium. But from the dynamical point of view the question is much simpler. We then deal not with material continuity, not with little bridges of connecting protoplasm, but with a continuity of forces, a comprehensive field of force, which runs through and through the entire organism and is by no means restricted in its passage to a protoplasmic continuum. And such a continuous field of force, somehow shaping the whole organism, independently of the number, magnitude and form of the individual cells, which enter, like a froth, into its fabric, seems to me certainly and obviously to exist. As Whitman says, “the fact that physiological unity is not broken by cell-boundaries is confirmed in so many ways that it must be accepted as one of the fundamental truths of biology[263].”
CHAPTER V THE FORMS OF CELLS
Protoplasm, as we have already said, is a fluid or rather a semifluid substance, and we need not pause here to attempt to describe the particular properties of the semifluid, colloid, or jelly-like substances to which it is allied; we should find it no easy matter. Nor need we appeal to precise theoretical definitions of fluidity, lest we come into a debateable land. It is in the most general sense that protoplasm is “fluid.” As Graham said (of colloid matter in general), “its softness partakes of fluidity, and enables the colloid to become a vehicle for liquid diffusion, like water itself[264].” When we can deal with protoplasm in sufficient quantity we see it flow; particles move freely through it, air-bubbles and liquid droplets shew round or spherical within it; and we shall have much to say about other phenomena manifested by its own surface, which are those especially characteristic of liquids. It may encompass and contain solid bodies, and it may “secrete” within or around itself solid substances; and very often in the complex living organism these solid substances formed by the living protoplasm, like shell or nail or horn or feather, may remain when the protoplasm which formed them is dead and gone; but the protoplasm itself is fluid or semifluid, and accordingly permits of free (though not necessarily rapid) diffusion and easy convection of particles within itself. This simple fact is of elementary importance in connection with form, and with what appear at first sight to be common characteristics or peculiarities of the forms of living things.
The older naturalists, in discussing the differences between inorganic and organic bodies, laid stress upon the fact or statement that the former grow by “agglutination,” and the latter by {202} what they termed “intussusception.” The contrast is true, rather, of solid as compared with jelly-like bodies of all kinds, living or dead, the great majority of which as it so happens, but by no means all, are of organic origin.
A crystal “grows” by deposition of new molecules, one by one and layer by layer, superimposed or aggregated upon the solid substratum already formed. Each particle would seem to be influenced, practically speaking, only by the particles in its immediate neighbourhood, and to be in a state of freedom and independence from the influence, either direct or indirect, of its remoter neighbours. As Lord Kelvin and others have explained the formation and the resulting forms of crystals, so we believe that each added particle takes up its position in relation to its immediate neighbours already arranged, generally in the holes and corners that their arrangement leaves, and in closest contact with the greatest number[265]. And hence we may repeat or imitate this process of arrangement, with great or apparently even with precise accuracy (in the case of the simpler crystalline systems), by piling up spherical pills or grains of shot. In so doing, we must have regard to the fact that each particle must drop into the place where it can go most easily, or where no easier place offers. In more technical language, each particle is free to take up, and does take up, its position of least potential energy relative to those already deposited; in other words, for each particle motion is induced until the energy of the system is so distributed that no tendency or resultant force remains to move it more. The application of this principle has been shewn to lead to the production of planes[266] (in all cases where by the limitation of material, surfaces must occur); and where we have planes, straight edges and solid angles must obviously also occur; and, if equilibrium is {203} to follow, must occur symmetrically. Our piling up of shot, or manufacture of mimic crystals, gives us visible demonstration that the result is actually to obtain, as in the natural crystal, plane surfaces and sharp angles, symmetrically disposed.