tance in the cell activity. Thus the cell proves itself not to; be
a bit of nuclear matter surrounded by secondary parts, but a community
of several perhaps equally important interrelated members.

Another series of observations weakened the cell doctrine in an entirely
different direction. It had been assumed that the body of the
multicellular animal or plant was made of independent units.
Microscopists of a few years ago began to suggest that the cells are in
reality not separated from each other, but are all connected by
protoplasmic fibres. In quite a number of different kinds of tissue it
has been determined that fine threads of protoplasmic material lead from
one cell to another in such a way that the cells are in vital
connection. The claim has been made that there is thus a protoplasmic
connection between all the cells of the body of the animal, and that
thus the animal or plant, instead of consisting of a large number of
separate independent cells, consists of one great mass of living matter
which is aggregated into little centres, each commonly holding a
nucleus. Such a conclusion is not yet demonstrated, nor is its
significance very clear should it prove to be a fact; but it is plain
that such suggestions quite decidedly modify the conception of the body
as a community of independent cells.

There is yet another line of thought which is weakening this early
conception of the cell doctrine. There is a growing conviction that the
view of the organism, simply as the sum of the activities of the
individual cells, is not a correct understanding of it. According to
this extreme position, a living thing can have no organization until it
appears as the result of cell multiplication. To take a concrete case,
the egg of a starfish can not possess any organization corresponding to
the starfish. The egg is a single cell, and the starfish a community of
cells. The egg can, therefore, no more contain the organization of a
starfish than a hunter in the backwoods can contain within himself the
organization of a great metropolis. The descendants of individuals like
the hunter may unite to form a city, and the descendants of the egg cell
may, by combining, give rise to the starfish. But neither can the man
contain within himself the organization of the city, nor the egg that of
the starfish. It is, perhaps, true that such an extreme position of the
cell doctrine has not been held by any one, but thoughts very closely
approxim