Lectures on man : his place in creation, and in the history of the earth / by Carl Vogt ; edited by James Hunt.
- Date:
- 1864
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on man : his place in creation, and in the history of the earth / by Carl Vogt ; edited by James Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
471/516 page 445
![isms wliicli occupy an intermediate position between the vegetable and animal world, and thus apparently constitute a connecting link between the two kingdoms, we must, on the otlier band, not forget thatcell is only an abstract notion, and that there prevail many diversities in the individual cells of the various organisms and their respective organs—differences which must be considered as original, and which therefore from the very beginning impart to the organisms arising from them a sjoecial direction in development. If, therefore, it be said that all organisms arise from a single cell, and that this cell is the fundamental and primordial form of the organism, it is perfectly correct; but if it be attempted to reduce all existing organisms to one primordial elementary cell, from which they may have been developed, the axiom is false. Not only do organisms that stand in an intermediate position between animals and plants consist of different kinds of cells; not only are these cells developed in a different mode, so that we are able to distinguish different species of these organisms ; but also those egg-cells from which the more compound organ- isms are developed, show, from the beginning, a fundamental difference both in form and subsequent development. The attempts, therefore, to reduce the whole organic world to one fundamental form, so to S]Deak, to one primordial cell, from which all .organisms have been developed in different directions, are as futile as the assumption of those naturalists who con- sider that the whole organic creation had been developed from an elementary plastic matter, the so-called primordial slime. In assuming the possibility that by the co-opera- tion of some forces—as yet unknown to us—an organic cell may be produced from chemical elements, it is clear that the slightest change in the action of these elements must effect a change in the product, that is to say in the cells produced. But as it is impossible to assume that on the whole surface of the earth the same causes have acted, and are still acting, under the same conditions and with the same intensity in the production of such elementary cells, the deduction is clear, namely, that the original cells from which the organisms were developed must have possessed diversified forms and a different](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21923267_0471.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
