The most recent discoveries on the immigration and emigration of these amœboid corpuscles from the blood circulation into the tissue and back again lift the process of nutrition out of the inorganic into the organic sphere, in that, quite analogously to the procreative process, they may be perceived to be conditioned by the living individuality of their substrata. The nutritive fluid absorbed from the intestine as it enters into the lymphatic vessels as yet contains no formed elements, but doubtless it copiously receives such from the lymphatic glands; similarly the vascular glands, above all the spleen, are breeding-places of these amœboid elements. They pass through the walls of the blood-vessels into the tissue of the body, in that at first a fine thread-like process is pushed through a pore of the vascular wall, and if the process, which lasts for hours, remains undisturbed, turbed, the total content of the corpuscle gradually follows. These points have been most certainly established, as the eagerness of these corpuscles for the reception of finely divided pigments facilitates observation. As connective tissue corpuscles they now penetrate into all organs, and the cell-wanderings of the connective tissue enveloping all the organs have been even longer known. When they have fulfilled their office, they retreat through the walls of the blood-vessels or lymphatic vessels again into the circulation. Unfortunately we do not yet know anything more particularly with respect to the chemical differences on entrance and exit, and their possible regeneration into a condition capable of nutrition. This much is, however, certain, that the colourless blood corpuscles must also be regarded as the origin of the red blood corpuscles, which are the substrata of the respiratory process in the widest sense. The passage from the one to the other form is guaranteed by numerous intermediate stages. The red blood corpuscles now present, it is true, at their periphery no visible phenomena of movement; but according to the investigations of Brücke, which have been found to be confirmed also by other distinguished histologists, the red-coloured amœboid individual (zooid) is here only limited with its movements to the interior of its case, which consists of a porous, immobile, very soft, colourless, and vitreous substance (oikoïd). In the normal condition the zooid pervades the whole oikoïd, and leaves in the centre a colourless nucleus; placed in water, it withdraws, however, from the periphery to the centre, so that now the former appoars colourless, the latter red; not rarely one sees amœbiform processes radiate from the red centre to the periphery.—In the face of such results in regard to a living individuality of the supports of the nutritive and respiratory process in animal organisms, the naturalists in question have seen themselves constrained to the admission that only the view of the organism as a complex of living elementary beings is capable of doing justice to the phenomena. Each of these individual beings floats about independently in the lymph or the blood, and antonomously executes its functions pre-designated for it by its own individual nature, and yet the results fit as organically together as if a secret tie united these beings, or a secret commander guided their performances according to a higher plan.
But even before these recent surprising clues to the supports of nutrition and respiration, thinking naturalists, on considering the cell as the elementary fundamental form of all organic construction, have felt themselves compelled to the acknowledgment of living individuality within the externally limited organism. “All life is bound to the cell, and the cell is not merely the vessel of life, but it is itself the living part” (Virchow, “Vier Reden,” p. 54). “What is the organism? A community of living cells, a little state, well provided with all appurtenances of upper and under officials, servants and masters, great and small” (p. 55). “Life is the activity of the cell; its special character is the special character of the cell” (p. 10). “Peculiar appears to us the mode of activity, the special function of the organic matter, but yet it happens in no other way than the activity and function which Physics reveals in non-living nature. The entire speciality is limited to this, that the greatest multiplicity of material combinations is packed together in the smallest space; that every cell represents in itself a seat of most intimate effects, most manifold material combinations with one another, and that therefore results are attained which nowhere else occur in nature, since nowhere else is a similar intimacy of effects known” (p. 11). “If we will not make up our minds to distinguish between collective individuals and single individuals, the conception of individual in the organic branches of physical science must either be abandoned or be strictly confined to the cell. To the former result both the systematic materialist as well as the spiritualist must logically come; the unprejudiced realistic view of Nature appears to lead to the latter, in as much as only in this way is the unitarian conception of life assured for the whole sphere of vegetable and animal organisms” (pp. 73, 74). This is the final result of Virchow; one sees that he grazes the truth, without having the courage to grasp it firmly. What concerns us here is his well-established conception of the cell, which he has further elaborated according to the suggestions of Schleiden and Schwann, and therewith has raised animal physiology and pathology to a new level, so to say; comp. Virchow, “Cellularpathologie,” especially chaps, i. and xiv. That organisms in general consist of cells, and moreover of so many microscopically minute ones, for that there is the teleological ground that nutrition can only be effected by endosmosis. Endosmosis is only possible through very thin, firm walls. Thus if with these thin walls the necessary solidity is to be attained, the whole system must be a complex of very small cells. How great is the number of cells is proved by the following quotation:—
“At Zurich, near the Tiefenhof, stands an old linden-tree; every year, when it puts on its ornament of leaves, it forms, according to the estimate of Nägeli, about ten billions of newly living cells. In the blood of an adult man there circulate, according to the calculations of Vierordt and Welcker, at every moment, sixty billions (think: 60,000,000,000,000) of minutest cellular bodies” (Virchow, p. 55).
After all this, we cannot doubt that we have before us in every cell an individual; but whether with the cell we have reached the lowest grade of the individual, which is still organism, this may still appear doubtful.
We distinguish, namely, in most cells: cell-wall, cell-content, kernel or nucleus, and usually also, in addition, kernel-corpuscle or nucleolus. These parts are decidedly to be regarded as organs of the cell, having their special functions. The cell-wall regulates the income and outgoing according to quantity and quality; the nucleolus takes care for propagation or increase of the cells (cells without nucleolus are infertile); the nucleus secures the continuance of the cell, and probably directs the chemical transformations and productions in the interior of the cell. If the relative independence of these organs is to be regarded as established, one can hardly dispute whether they are still organic individuals, for undoubtedly within every such sphere there takes place an organic reciprocal action of the parts for the sake of the function to be exercised.
This relative independence of the organs of the cell, inferred by me a priori, has recently received a needed confirmation through the inquiries and observations of the botanist Hanstein, which he has made especially on the cells of some vegetable capillaries, but also on the parenchyma cells of different plants. In the large hair-cells of the Cucurbitaceæ and many Compositæ, e.g., one sees the cell-nucleus suspended about the middle of the cell by protoplasmic bands, “like the spider in its web.” The protoplasmic bag-like covering of the nucleus, the bands, and the cell-wall exhibit the most varied movements, by means of which the main and side currents of the fluid cell-content circulating in the cell must be explained. Independent of the latter, however, because without reference to their direction, and often even opposed to it, are the movements of the cell-nucleus, which require now a few minutes, now, however, even several hours, to traverse about the space of the cell. Now they are rectilinear, now frequently interlaced, now the nucleus intersects the cell crosswise, now it creeps along clinging to a wall. By this both nucleus and nuclear envelope and bands c
onstantly change their form, and the nuclear corpuscle changes its situation in the nucleus.—In the division of the cell, also, characteristic modes of movement take place. In the first plaoe, the nucleus repairs to the centre, and the bands draw nearer to form a heap of plasma. Then the nuclear corpuscle first divides into two, and thereupon the nucleus is halved by a fine, just perceptible border, until the division reaches also the protoplasmic mass, in which gradually a new wall of cellulose is formed. Now the two new nuclei (in medulla-parenchyma-cells of Dicotyledons) betake themselves tolerably quickly to the wall, creeping to opposite sides of the old cell-wall, where they rest a certain time before they again begin their normal life. “Thus, then, the cell-nucleus, through the changeability of its own form, as well as through the still greater one of its covering, and through the restless shifting and remodelling of the bands which issue from it and keep it in suspension, acquires a striking resemblance to a young plasmode or an amœbiform organism. Nay, it resembles such an one during its creeping about to such a degree, that substantially only the union with the wall-protoplasm serves as a point of distinction.” According to this, Hanstein adopts the above-mentioned view of Brüke, “according to which the whole protoplasmic system must be conceived as an individualised organism, i.e., a living, moving, proper being, consisting of nucleus, peripheral envelope, and radial or net-like uniting members, and found within its self-formed shell, the cellulose wall, in continual motion, which consists in a gliding hither and thither, and a consequent shifting and constant remodelling of the internal articulation. As the molluse not only constructs its own shell, but moves within the same, so the protoplasmic body within its cellular membrane. Not the currents in the bands, not the cell nucleus, not the primordial sac per se are the seat and cause of the movement. The whole protoplasmic body, which is not a substance, but an organism, moves in all its parts, now simultaneously, now alternately, as indivisible, amœbiform, vitalised, proper being, which of course in the higher plants is only partial existence of a larger whole” (“Botanische Ztg.,” 1872, Nos. 2 and 3).
If in the Monera or protoplasmic primitive animals the observation of the microscope cannot establish any morphological differentiation of the apparently homogeneous slimy clot, there still follows from the fact that the essentially different behaviour of the Monera in propagation and nutrition has already necessitated the discrimination of seven different kinds, that doubtless an inner differentiation must exist. If the viscidity or tenacity of an extremely fluid water-drop is at its surface very much greater than in its interior, and this difference increases in an astonishing degree in aqueous albuminous solutions, it must certainly obtain in a viscous protoplasmic drop or clot, even when the condensation at the surface does not reach such a degree as to become visible to the eye as solid cell-envelope, to say nothing of its being separable as isolated membrane; the statements with respect to cells destitute of membranes or plasmic clots are therefore always to be understood cum grano salis. Even when an intussusception of solid pigment-molecules is proved by means of amœbiform movements, a certain viscosity of the state of aggregation of the surface is always apparent, but considerable difference of the state of aggregation between surface and content is by no means refuted. (The formation of an envelope in drops has recently been very well observed by Famintzin in solutions of carbonate of lime, by allowing concentrated solutions of chloride of calcium and carbonate of potash to act upon one another with gradual addition of water.) In a similar manner, as a condensation takes place at the surface even before it becomes visible, can a condensation also take place at the centre without being perceptible to the eye. Under all circumstances, however, the superficial condensation must occasion a functional difference from the less dense content, as is manifested in the absorption of booty. In the same way the inner condensation of the centre must condition a functional difference, as it appears in the division proceeding from within. Where, then, cell-membrane and nucleus appear to be wanting, whilst yet the cell manifestly performs the functions thereto appertaining, there must necessarily exist analogues of these organs imperceptible to the eye. Only in this way can we understand the development of nucleated membranous cells from simple plasmic clots, as required by the Theory of Descent. How overhasty it were, relying on the mere visible appearance, to deny a differentiation of the Monera into organs of various functions is eminently proved, besides the indiscernibility of an actual membrane at the apices of several cilia, by the analogy with the just fertilised ovum, in whose apparent molecular homogeneity those differences must yet exist, so that in its development to the child “the finest mental and bodily peculiarities of the parents are afterwards manifested in the same. We must here stand still in wonderment and admiration before the almost infinite delicacy of albuminous matter” (Häckel, “Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte,” 2d edit., p. 179).
These would, then, be the lowest individuals which could be called organic. There is a question, however, whether we are altogether entitled to require of an individual that it be organism. This much is certain, as long as a thing has parts, so long must these parts be in organic reciprocal connection, if the teleological unity of relation is not to fail; i.e., as long as a thing has parts it must be organism, if it is to be individual. But how if a thing has no more parts? If of a thing with parts one requires the most intimate causal relation of the parts only that it may possess the greatest possible unity in all directions, should then this greatest possible unity not exist in yet far higher degree where the thing is in its nature simple, i.e., without parts, thus this requirement is from the first rendered superfluous? The unity of place, cause, and purpose is, eo ipso, given with the simplicity of the thing; but the requirement of reciprocity of the parts, which in the compound thing was a necessary evil, has here been fortunately superseded, since all the parts are reduced to one, which is at the same time the whole; the unity of the simplicity is thus much stronger than the unity of the reciprocation of the parts. It does not detract from the worth of the present argument when the notion of unity is asserted to be inapplicable to the simple, for we had only reached the notion of unity by seeking what is individual, i.e., what in its nature cannot be divided. This is, however, undoubtedly at least as much the case in the simple as in the complex unity, nay, even still more than in the latter, for the unity consisting of united parts always carries in itself the possibility of resolution into parts, but not the simple.
Such a simple thing, which thus has the highest claim to the conception of the individual, we are cognisant of, however, in the immaterial functional atomic force, which consists in a single continued act of will. Save the atoms there can be no individuals in the inorganic sphere, for everything which consists of several atoms has these for its parts, and must accordingly be organism if it is to be individual. It is thus wrong to call a crystal or a mountain an individual. On the other hand, we may very well call the heavenly bodies, so far as they are still living, individuals, for they are then in fact organisms; but with their extinction the individuality also perishes, as in animals and plants. Whoever doubts that a living Astrum, such as the earth, is an organism, need only study the mutual action of atmosphere and interior in the circulation of water, the reciprocal action of stratification and lower animal kingdom, as well as the strata among themselves in the metamorphosis of rocks, and the mutual action of the organic kingdoms. In short, let him study geology, meteorology, and the household of Nature on the large scale. He will everywhere find revealed the essence of the organic world, preservation and improvement of form by change of matter, without it being thereby implied that the direct participation of the will of the Unconscious (beyond the atomic forces in the actual combinations and the organisms concerned in the formation of the strata) is requisite for that end.
Let us now consider how the conscious individual is related to the material, or, better expressed, external individual. It is at once evident that only where an external individual is given can a conscious individual becom
e possible; but a conscious individual need not arise in every external individual. The external individual is thus a condition, but not the sufficient reason, of the conscious individual.
We have seen that a certain kind of material motion with a certain intensity is the condition of the origin of consciousness. All those external individuals must thus be excluded from the production of a conscious individual which do not fulfil these conditions in the character or strength of their movements. It is just possible that the atomic forces, perhaps also several cells of a too solid or a too fluid nature, are in this case. Inorganic masses without external individuality have evidently also no conscious individuality, for even if the several atoms are to have their consciousness, this would always remain in atomistic dispersion through lack of a uniting bond, but could never reach a higher unity. Where we first find visible traces of consciousness is in the cell with semi-fluid content (protoplasm of the protists); here undoubtedly the unity of consciousness is introduced through the same conditions as its origin, since the part of the cell-content satisfying these conditions is distributed homogeneously to all sides of the cell. We shall then be permitted to assume that where consciousness is present in a cell, an inner conscious individuality also corresponds to the external individuality.
Philosophy of the Unconscious Page 62