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190 THEORY OF THE CELLS. are essentially the same for all elementary parts. One can see no reason why this should be the case, if each organism be endued with a special power to frame the parts according to the purpose which they have to fulfil: it might much rather be expected that the formative principle, although identical for organs physiologically the same, would yet in different tissues be correspondingly varied. This resemblance of the elementary parts has, in the instance of plants, already led to the conjecture that the cells are really the organisms, and that the whole plant is an aggregate of these organisms arranged according to certain laws. But since the elementary parts of animals bear exactly similar relations, the individuality of an entire animal would thus be lost; and yet precisely upon the individuality of the whole animal does the assumption rest, that it possesses a single fundamental power operating in accordance with a definite idea.

Meanwhile we cannot altogether lay aside teleological views if all phenomena are not clearly explicable by the physical view. It is, however, unnecessary to do so, because an explanation, according to the teleological view, is only admissible when the physical can be shown to be impossible. In any case it conduces much more to the object of science to strive, at least, to adopt the physical explanation. And I would repeat that, when speaking of a physical explanation of organic phenomena, it is not necessary to understand an explanation by known physical powers, such, for instance, as that universal refuge electricity, and the like; but an explanation by means of powers which operate like the physical powers, in accordance with strict laws of blind necessity, whether they be also to be found in inorganic nature or not.

We set out, therefore, with the supposition that an organized body is not produced by a fundamental power which is guided in its operation by a definite idea, but is developed, according to blind laws of necessity, by powers which, like those of inorganic nature, are established by the very existence of matter. As the elementary materials of organic nature are not different from those of the inorganic kingdom, the source of the organic phenomena can only reside in another combination of these materials, whether it be in a peculiar mode of union of the elementary atoms to form atoms of the second