The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological PhilosophyHaeckel, Ernst
Philosophy
The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy
Haeckel, Ernst
Biology; Evolution (Biology); Life -- Origin
not succeeded, in spite of all efforts, in discovering a centrosoma in
the cells of the higher plants and many of the protists; and, in the
second place, a number of recent chemical experiments have succeeded in
producing centrosomata artificially (for instance, by the addition of
magnesium chloride) in the cytoplasm. Hence many cytologists regard the
centrosoma as a secondary product of differentiation in the cell-body,
not the nucleus.
Two other parts of the nucleus that we find very often, but by no means
universally, in the cells of the animal and plant body are the nuclear
membrane (caryotheca) and the nuclear sap (caryolymph). A large number
of cells--but not all--have the appearance of vesicles, having a thin
skin enclosing a liquid content, the nuclear sap. The achromin then
usually forms a frame-work of threads, with chromatin granules in its
meshes or knots, within this round vesicle. This very thin nuclear
membrane (often only visible as its contour) or caryotheca may be
regarded as the result of surface-strain (at the planes of contact of
caryoplasm and cytoplasm). The watery and usually clear and transparent
nuclear sap (caryolymph) is formed by imbibition of watery fluid (like
the frothy structure of the plasm in general). The separation of the
nuclear membrane and nuclear sap is not a primary property of the
nucleus, but is due to a secondary differentiation in the originally
homogeneous caryoplasm.
Like the caryoplasm of the nucleus, the cytoplasm of the cell-body is
originally a chemical modification of the simple and once homogeneous
plasm (the archiplasm). This is clearly shown by the comparative
biology of the protists, their unicellular organism presenting a much
greater variety of stages of cell-organization than the subordinate
tissue-cells in the bodies of the multicellular histona. However, in
the great majority of cells the cytoplasm is separated into several,
and frequently very numerous, parts, which have received diverse forms
and functions in the division of labor. We then see very conspicuously
the regularity of cell-organization, which is altogether wanting in
the simple homogeneous plasma granules of the monera. As this great
differentiation of the advanced elementary organism is incorrectly
generalized by some recent cytologists and described as a universal
feature of cells, it is necessary to insist explicitly that it is a
secondary phylogenetic development, and is altogether wanting in the
primitive organisms. The complexity of the physiological division
of labor and the accompanying morphological separation of parts is
extremely great in the cytoplasm. When we wish to arrange them in a
few large groups from a general point of view, we may distinguish the
active plasma-formations from the passive plasma-products; the former
are due to a chemical metamorphosis of the living plasm, the latter
lifeless excretions from it.
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