In all its aspects, and not least in its relation to form, the growth of organisms has many analogies, some close and some perhaps more remote, among inanimate things. As the waves grow when the winds strive with the other forces which govern the movements of the surface of the sea, as the heap grows when we pour corn out of a sack, as the crystal grows when from the surrounding solution the proper molecules fall into their appropriate places: so in all these cases, very much as in the organism itself, is growth accompanied by change of form, and by a development of definite shapes and contours. And in these cases (as in all other mechanical phenomena), we are led to equate our various magnitudes with time, and so to recognise that growth is essentially a question of rate, or of velocity. The differences of form, and changes of form, which are brought about by varying rates (or “laws”) of growth, are essentially the same phenomenon whether they be, so to speak, episodes in the life-history of the individual, or manifest themselves as the normal and distinctive characteristics of what we call separate species of the race. From one form, or ratio of magnitude, to another there is but one straight and direct road of transformation, be the journey taken fast or slow; and if the transformation take place at all, it will in all likelihood proceed in the self-same way, whether it occur within the life-time of an individual or during the long ancestral history of a race. No small part of what is known as Wolff’s or von Baer’s law, that the individual organism tends to pass through the phases characteristic of its ancestors, or that the life-history of the individual tends to recapitulate the ancestral history of its race, lies wrapped up in this simple account of the relation between rate of growth and form. But enough of this discussion. Let us leave for a while the subject of the growth of the organism, and attempt to study the conformation, within and without, of the individual cell. {156} CHAPTER IV ON THE INTERNAL FORM AND STRUCTURE OF THE CELL In the early days of the cell-theory, more than seventy years ago, Goodsir was wont to speak of cells as “centres of growth” or “centres of nutrition,” and to consider them as essentially “centres of force.” He looked forward to a time when the forces connected with the cell should be particularly investigated: when, that is to say, minute anatomy should be studied in its dynamical aspect. “When this branch of enquiry,” he says “shall have been opened up, we shall expect to have a science of organic forces, having direct relation to anatomy, the science of organic forms[198].” And likewise, long afterwards, Giard contemplated a science of _morphodynamique_,—but still looked upon it as forming so guarded and hidden a “territoire scientifique, que la plupart des naturalistes de nos jours ne le verront que comme Moïse vit la terre promise, seulement de loin et sans pouvoir y entrer[199].”