It is argued by Mr Huxley in his essay on "Yeast," as against Kant, who conceived generally, "the special peculiarity of the living body to be that the parts exist for the sake of the whole, and the whole for the sake of the parts," that by the resolution of the living body "into an aggregation of quasi-independent cells," "this conception has ceased to be tenable." But it is not so certain that this is so, whether as regards the cells, or as regards the body. A cell is still a whole of parts, and both parts and whole are in the relation assigned by Kant. Then, when the actual inter-connections of the body and the cells are studied, the result is not what Mr Huxley would seem to infer as to the primacy, so to speak, and independence of the cells. They, rather, are seen to be but subservient ministers, while the body itself is the prime and dominating agent. In illustration here, let me quote from my review of Dr Beale's recent work on Protoplasm, in the Edinburgh Courant for February 25, 1870:—

"All the tissues and organs of which we consist are built up, according to Dr Beale, by millions of minute living particles. Each of these is a unit of germinal matter, surrounded or faced by formed material. This formed material goes to constitute the tissue or organ—skin, muscle, bone, liver, lung, etc.—in which the living particle of germinal matter finds itself . . . Materials from the blood constantly pass into the centres of the particles of the germinal matter. These particles are thus fed, for they convert the materials they receive into their own substance, at the same time that, at their own surfaces, they themselves are constantly passing into the non-living state of formed material. This, then, is the process. Germinal matter (a cell) converts pabulum (from the blood) into itself, multiplies, and lastly dies (in an external ring or external surface) into formed material. The three matters italicised constitute thus Dr Beale's physiological elements, and of these the germinal matter alone lives. . . . The least erudite reader may be able to form to himself, perhaps now, a perfectly clear idea of the nature, place, and business of these working units (the cells or germinal particles) in the general economy. It is not difficult for any one to picture a skeleton, or to conceive it filled up with muscles, and covered with skin. As little difficult will it be, imaginatively, to place lungs, heart, stomach, and viscera, within the trunk, and to connect every part of these, as well as of bone, muscle, and skin, with the marrowy brain within the skull, by means of the threads of the nerves. These page 75 are the general outlines of the structure, and this structure is now on the whole to be conceived as formed material thrown up by millions of germinal particles seated beneath or around it. The entire surface of the skin, for example, is to be conceived as so much formed material casing so many millions of germinal particles that cluster over its inner surface. Vessels, again, in similar illustration, are to be viewed as so many pipes and pipelets, the solid canals of which are only the formed material of innumerable germinal particles around them. In this way, then, the germinal particles' almost show as so many living paving-beetles constantly pushing up the continuity of the streets and walls—of the bone, skin, brain, that constitute man. But this being so, is it possible to avoid realising to ourselves, and in a very vivid manner, the absurdity of the pretensions of Mr Huxley to materialise all the processes of the organism by means of the microscope? Why, of this organisation itself as such—that is, of the mechanical apparatus it presents to us—the microscope tells us nothing whatever. The microscope only enables us to see a single paving-beetle, a single cell, a single germinal particle in connection with more or less of its own portion of formed material—a single coral, so to speak, and the polype that died into it: it tells us nothing whatever of the vast machine which these polypes have all unconsciously built up with their coral. The mighty and complex fabric of man is, after all, despite its innumerable parts, a unity : all these parts but go towards that unity, are sublated into it. Now, what of all that does microscopic observation tell us? Why, simply nothing. Myriads of miserable Egyptians carried stones to the Pyramid; but no microscopic watching of any one of these, stone and all, would ever explain the Pyramid itself—its many to a one. So with the frame of man; on which, would we understand it aright, it is infinitely more necessary to turn the lens, so to speak, of an all-embracing telescope, than to turn on its infinitesimal particles the minuteness of the microscope. ... It must be evident, indeed, that the microscopic particle throws but small light on, so to speak, the telescopic whole. Consider the supply of pabulum alone. If with that pabulum the germinal particles build up individually the various units of the machine, it is the machine itself, and as a whole, that supplies that pabulum. Nay, it is the machine itself that properly alone lives, that connects all particles, living or dead, into a unity and purpose of which unity the particles themselves, whether living or dead, know naught. . . . The probability is, then, that the germinal particles have little action besides providing for the keeping up of the tissues, and that it is on these tissues, for the most part, that the functions of the single unity depend."