CHAPTER IV ON THE INTERNAL FORM AND STRUCTURE OF THE CELL

Division of the cell is essentially accompanied, and preceded, by a change from radial or monopolar to a definitely bipolar polarity.

In the hitherto quiescent, or apparently quiescent cell, we perceive certain movements, which correspond precisely to what must accompany and result from a 〜polarisation〝 of forces within the {169} cell: of forces which, whatever may be their specific nature, at least are capable of polarisation, and of producing consequent attraction or repulsion between charged particles of matter. The opposing forces which were distributed in equiôÙlibôÙrium throughout the substance of the cell become focussed at two 〜centrosomes,〝 which may or may not be already distinguished as visible portions of matter; in the egg, one of these is always near to, and the other remote from, the 〜animal pole〝 of the egg, which pole is visibly as well as chemically different from the other, and is the region in which the more rapid and conspicuous developmental changes will presently begin. Between the two centrosomes, a spindle-shaped

figure appears, whose striking resemblance to the lines of force made visible by iron-filings between the poles of a magnet, was at once recognised by Hermann Fol, when in 1873 he witnessed for the first time the phenomenon in question. On the farther side of the centrosomes are seen star-like figures, or 〜asters,〝 in which we can without difficulty recognise the broken lines of force which run externally to those stronger lines which lie nearer to the polar axis and which constitute the 〜spindle.〝 The lines of force are rendered visible or 〜material,〝 just as in the experiment of the iron-filings, by the fact that, in the heterogeneous substance of the cell, certain portions of matter are more 〜permeable〝 to the acting force than the rest, become themselves polarised after the {170} fashion of a magnetic or 〜paramagnetic〝 body, arrange themselves in an orderly way between the two poles of the field of force, cling to one another as it were in threads²⁸, and are only prevented by the friction of the surrounding medium from approaching and congregating around the adjacent poles.

As the field of force strengthens, the more will the lines of force be drawn in towards the interpolar axis, and the less evident will be those remoter lines which constitute the terminal, or extrapolar, asters: a clear space, free from materialised lines of force, may thus tend to be set up on either side of the spindle, the so-called 〜Bû¥tschli space〝 of the histologists²⁹. On the other hand, the lines of force constituting the spindle will be less concentrated if they find a path of less resistance at the periphery of the cell: as happens, in our