Page:Microscopicial researchers - Theodor Schwann - English Translation - 1947.pdf/238

212 THEORY OF THE CELLS. bodies capable of imbibition could be brought to crystallize. So long as the object of such a comparison were merely to render the representation of the process by which cells are formed more clear, there could not be much urged against it; it involves nothing hypothetical, since it contains no explanation; no assertion is made that the fundamental power of the cells really has something in common with the power by which crystals are formed. We have, indeed, compared the growth of organisms with crystallization, in so far as in both cases solid substances are deposited from a fluid, but we have not therefore asserted the identity of the fundamental powers. So far we have not advanced beyond the data, beyond a certain simple mode of representing the facts.

The question is, however, whether the exact accordance of the phenomena would not authorize us to go further. If the formation and growth of the elementary particles of organisms have nothing more in common with crystallization than merely the deposition of solid substances from out of a fluid, there is certainly no reason for assuming any more intimate connexion of the two processes. But we have seen, first, that the laws which regulate the deposition of the molecules forming the elementary particles of organisms are the same for all elementary parts; that there is a common principle in the development of all elementary parts, namely, that of the formation of cells; it was then shown that the power which induced the attachment of the new molecules did not reside in the entire organism, but in the separate elementary particles (this we called the plastic power of the cells); lastly, it was shown that the laws, according to which the new molecules combine to form cells, are (so far as our incomplete knowledge of the lawsof crystallization admits of our anticipating their probability) the same as those by which substances capable of imbibition would crystallize. Now the cells do, in fact, consist only of material capable of imbibition; should we not then be justified in putting forth the proposition, that the formation of the elementary parts of organisms is nothing but a crystallization of substance capable of imbibition, and the organism nothing but an aggregate of such crystals capable of imbibition?

To advance so important a point as absolutely true, would certainly need the clearest proof; but it cannot be said that