error of attributing to matter what is due to energy and is manifested in force: or, more strictly speaking, of attributing to material particles individually what is due to the energy of their collocation.
The tendency is a very natural one, as knowledge of structure increases, to ascribe particular virtues to the material structures themselves, and the error is one into which the disciple is likely to fall, but of which we need not suspect the master-mind. The dynamical aspect of the case was in all probability kept well in view by those who, like Goodsir himself, first attacked the problem of the cell and originated our conceptions of its nature and functions.
But if we speak, as Weismann and others speak, of an ãhereditary substance,ã a substance which is split off from the parent-body, and which hands on to the new generation the charôÙacôÙterisôÙtics of the old, we can only justify our mode of speech by the assumption that that particular portion of matter is the essential vehicle of a particular charge or distribution of energy, in which is involved the capability of producing motion, or of doing ãwork.ã
For, as Newton said, to tell us that a thing ãis endowed with an occult specific quality, by which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us nothing; but to derive two or three general principles of motion6 from phenomena would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes of these principles were not yet discovered.ã The things which we see in the cell are less important than the actions which we recognise in the cell; and these latter we must especially scrutinize, in the hope of discovering how far they may be attributed to the simple and well-known physical forces, and how far they be relevant or irrelevant to the phenomena which we associate with, and deem essential to, the manifestation of life. It may be that in this way we shall in time draw nigh to the recognition of a specific and ultimate residuum. {159}
And lacking, as we still do lack, direct knowledge of the actual forces inherent in the cell, we may yet learn something of their distribution, if not also of their nature, from the outward and inward configuration of the cell, and from the changes taking place in this configuration; that is to say from the movements of matter, the kinetic phenomena, which the forces in action set up.
The fact that the germ-cell develops into a very complex structure, is no absolute proof that the cell itself is structurally a very complicated mechanism: nor yet, though this is somewhat less obvious, is it sufficient to prove that the forces at work, or latent, within it are especially numerous and complex. If we blow into a bowl of soapsuds and raise a great mass of many-hued and variously shaped bubbles, if we explode a rocket and watch the regular and beautiful configuration of its falling streamers, if we consider the wonders of a limestone cavern which a filtering stream has filled with stalactites, we soon perceive that in all these cases we have begun with an initial system of very slight complexity, whose structure in no way foreshadowed the result, and whose comparatively simple intrinsic forces only play their part by complex interaction with the equally simple forces of the surrounding medium. In an earlier age, men sought for the visible embryo, even for the homunculus, within the reproductive cells; and to this day, we scrutinize these cells for visible structure, unable to free ourselves from that old doctrine of ãpre-formation7.ã
Moreover, the microscope seemed to substantiate the idea (which we may trace back to Leibniz8 and to Hobbes9), that there is no limit to the mechanical complexity which we may postulate in an organism, and no limit, therefore, to the hypotheses which we may rest thereon.
But no microscopical examination of a stick of sealing-wax, no study of the material of which it is composed, can enlighten {160} us as to its electrical manifestations or properties. Matter of itself has no power to do, to