71. We have already seen that the cell is an anatomical element, or organite; the organism is but an aggregate of organites _and_ their plasmodes. But Biology, which deals with the organism as a whole, and with functions which are the resultants of all the vital properties, must not be restricted to any single factor, however important. It would assuredly be deemed absurd to say that diamond rings and lead-pencils were the same, because the diamond and the plumbago, which are the specific elements of each, are both the same chemical element,--carbon. The substance is really different in diamond and plumbago, is different in properties, and is, in rings and pencils, united with different substances into objects having very different properties. Whatever analysis may discover as to the identities of organic structures, we cannot explain a single vital phenomenon without taking into account the three terms, Structure, Aliment, and Instrument; and whenever a cell is said to be the seat of vital action, these three terms must be implied. In Dr. Beale’s hypothesis the restriction is carried to its extreme; not content with the cell, he withdraws vital action from the cell as a whole, assigning it to the protoplasm and nucleus--cell-contents and cell-wall being, in his view, dead. If it be true that the protoplasm is alone concerned in Nutrition, yet Nutrition is not Life. Occupied mainly with formative processes, it leaves other indispensable processes to other parts. He instances the removal of all the tissues during the metamorphoses of insects:--“new organs and textures are laid down afresh and developed _ab initio_, instead of being built up upon those first formed.” But to show how he restricts the idea of Life, he adds: “Such complete change, however, necessitates a state of existence during which _action_ or _function remains in complete abeyance_.”[26] The muscles and nerves which are instrumental in this functional life are said to be dead. It is true that the muscle-fibre does not develop fresh fibres. But it is equally true that the protoplasm of muscle does not alone execute _muscular_ contraction. Each has its special office. Hence I reject the idea that formed material is dead. He further says “formed material may _be_ changed, it cannot _change_ itself.” The antithesis is doubly inexact: 1°, nothing changes itself, but only yields to pressure, or reacts on being stimulated; and 2°, all the evidence at hand is against the notion that the formed material is not the seat of incessant molecular change; it is wasted and repaired molecule by molecule. Kölliker properly protests against the growing tendency of histologists to deify protoplasm, and to make it the sole seat of vital changes, the cell-wall and cell-products having also, he says, their physiological importance. It is manifestly erroneous to deny vital changes to the red blood-corpuscles on the ground of their no longer containing germinal matter.[27]