Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/183

 support or basis of cellular life, are groups of micellæ formed of albuminoid substances and water. These clustered forms, these micellæ, are not absolutely peculiar to organized matter. Pfeffer, the learned botanist, has pointed them out under another name, tagmata, in the membranes of chemical precipitates.

Beyond this limit analysis finds nothing but the chemical molecule and the atom. So that if we wish to reconstruct the hierarchy of the materials of constitution of the protoplasm in order of ascending complexity, we shall find at the foundation the atom or atoms of simple bodies. They are principally carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, the elements of all organic compounds, to which may be added sulphur and phosphorus. At the head we have the albuminoid molecule, or the albuminoid molecules, aggregates of the preceding atoms. In the third stage the micellæ or tagmata, aggregates of albuminoids and water, are still too small to be observed by the senses. They unite in their turn to form the microsomes, the first elements visible to the microscope. The microsomes, cemented by linin, form the filaments or links which are called mitomes. The living protoplasm is therefore nothing but a chain, or tangled skein, or a spongy skeleton formed by its filaments.

Such is the typical constitution of living matter according to microscopic observation, supplemented by a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, which is, so to speak, only a translation of one of its most evident physical properties. This relatively simple scheme has become a complex scheme in the hands of later biologists. On the micellar hypothesis, which seems almost inevitable in its character, new hypotheses have been