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And it was regarded as one of the triumphs of modern science when, about the middle of the last century, Pasteur gave definiteness to this doctrine, and when through him, through Virchow, and indeed the whole younger generation of naturalists, the proposition was modified, on the basis of the newly discovered cell-theory, to omnis cellula ex cellula.
In the further experiments which this query gave rise to, we meet with another illustrious Catholic name, that of Theodor Schwann, better known as the originator of that fundamental piece of scientific knowledge, the cell-theory.
To this category belong the whole modern development of the cell-theory, which replaces the previously single mechanism in the living body by millions of them, every one of which raises as many problems as the one had done in the days of cruder interpretation.
But in so far as they throw light on the essential idea of an organism, they may aid us in gaining a right view of our "cell republic." Says Whitman in a very interesting article on the "Inadequacy of the Cell-Theory": "That organization precedes cell-formation and regulates it, rather than the reverse, is a conclusion that forces itself upon us from many sides."
These minute organisms had been studied more or less by a host of observers, but in particular by the Frenchman Cagniard Latour and the German of cell-theory fame, Theodor Schwann. These men, working independently, had reached the conclusion, about 1837, that the micro-organisms play a vastly more important role in the economy of nature than any one previously had supposed.
We endeavor to explain by chemical laws the reduction of the materials which earth and air furnish, to a form in which they can be appropriated by the tree; by endosmose and exosmose we think we have overcome the obstacles to a clear comprehension of the circulation of the sap; and by a cell-theory we believe we have explained the whole growth of wood and leaves and fruit.
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