69. The germinal matter may be selected as the primary stage of the formed material, the initial point of growth, and thus stand for the pre-eminently distinctive centre of Nutrition; but were we to limit all Nutrition to the germinal matter, as defined by Dr. Beale, and deny the co-operation of all the formed material, we should still not be justified in restricting Life to simple Nutrition. We cannot exclude such phenomena as those of Sensation and Motion, nor can we assign these to the germinal matter.[23] To suppose this, would be equivalent to saying that the steam which issues from a teakettle is capable of the actions of a locomotive engine. The steam from the kettle is like the steam from the boiler, it has molecular energy, and by this will co-operate in the production of mechanical work, if the mechanism be adjusted to it. The molecular energy of the protoplasm in muscular fibre may be indispensable to the movements of the muscles, but these, and not the protoplasmic movements alone, are muscular contractions. An hypothesis, therefore, which is obliged to declare that muscle-fibre and nerve-fibre are not living, even when active in the organism, seems to me defective at its base. If we view these apart from the organism, they may, like all the other formed materials, be regarded as dead; and no one doubts that epidermis, nail, horn, hair, and bone are dead in this sense, that they cannot live independently, and do not reproduce themselves. But so long as even these form constituents of the living organism, they also are _living_ (§ 42).[24] It is only by a misconception of the analytical artifice that so simple a truth could have been missed. 70. But this misconception meets us at many a turn. The Vitalist hypothesis of an extra-organic agent of course refuses to regard Life as the expression of all the co-operant conditions; and even opponents of that hypothesis often fall into the same error of principle, when they attempt to explain Life by localizing it in the cells; which is simply a morphological substitution for the once popular doctrine that only the vascular parts were organized, and every part destitute of blood-vessels was dead. This idea seemed supported by the facts of the most highly vascular parts being the most vital, and of a parallelism existing between the vital activity of those organs which when injected seemed almost entirely composed of blood-vessels, as the liver and brain, and those which showed scarcely a trace of vessels, as cartilage and bone; it seemed supported also by the appearance of blood-vessels in all new formations, and by the idea of the blood as the nutrient fluid. Then came the cell-doctrine, and the belief that the cell was the really ultimate morphological element--which may be true--and that “here alone there is any manifestation of life to be found, so that we must not transfer the seat of vital action anywhere beyond the cell,”[25]--which is very questionable.