THEORY OF THE CELLS. 213
even the premises which have been set forth have in all points the requisite force. For too little is still known of the cause of crystallization to predict with safety (as was attempted above)what would follow if a substance capable of imbibition were to crystallize. And if these premises were allowed, there are two other points which must be proved in order to establish the proposition in question: 1. That the metabolic phenomena of the cells, which have not been referred to in the foregoing argument, are as much the necessary consequence of the faculty of imbibition, or of some other peculiarity of the substance of cells, as the plastic phenomena are. 2. That if a number of crystals capable of imbibition are formed, they must combine according to certain laws so as to form a systematic whole, similar to an organism. Both these points must be clearly proved, in order to establish the truth of the foregoing view. But it is otherwise if this view be adduced merely as an hypo- thesis, which may serve as a guide for new investigations. In such case the inferences are sufficiently probable to justify such an hypothesis, if only the two points just mentioned can be shown to accord with it.
With reference to the first of these points, it would certainly be impossible, in our ignorance as to the cause of chemical phenomena in general, to prove that a crystal capable of imbibition must produce chemical changes in substances surrounding it; but then we could not infer, from the manner in which spongy platinum is formed, that it would act so peculiarly upon oxygen and hydrogen. But in order to render this view tenable as a possible hypothesis, it is only necessary to see that it may be a consequence. It cannot be denied that it may: there are several reasons for it, though they certainly are but weak, For instance, since all cells possess this metabolic power, it is more likely to depend on a certain position of the molecules, which in all probability is essentially the same in all cells, than on the chemical combination of the molecules, which is very different in different cells. The presence, too, of different substances on the inner and the outer surface of the cell-membrane (see above, page 199) in some measure implies that a certain direction of the axes of the atoms may be essential to the metabolic phenomena of the cells. I think, therefore, that the cause of the
