Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
well as meaning.
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