Perpendicular section through thick layer of epithelium covering a papilla of the tongue, showing the bioplasm or living matter and the formed material of each elementary unit or cell.

In the lower part of figure 1, the cells which are closest to the nutrient matter are seen. Here there are no SEPARATE CELLS, but the soft formed material forms a continuous mass. These are the youngest bioplasts, and are multiplying in number. When the formed material has accumulated around the bioplasm to some extent the process of multiplication ceases. As the cells advance towards the surface, C, to take the place of those removed, the formed material becomes firin and dry, and the remains of the bioplasm die, when the whole "cell" consists of lifeless formed material only. x 700.

Bioplasm and
elastic tissue,
or formed ma-

terial.

The

bioplasm

is

moving in the direction

of

the arrow and
forming the
elastic tissue
as it proceeds.

Bioplast and formed
material (contractile
tissue) of muscle.
The bioplasm is mov-
ing in the direction
indicated
the

arrow.

now

by
It is
between a and b, but
was between 6 and r

Development

of

young dark-bordered
nerve fibres at a very
early period, showing
bioplasm and formed
material of young el-
ementary parts nd
the fine fibre coiling
spirally round the
developing dark bor-

dered bre.

About 1600.

VI.

LIFE, OR MECHANISM-WHICH?

ONE day the poet Goethe, when in his advanced age, was riding home to Weimar with his friend Eckermann, and conversing on the immortality of the soul. They turned by Tiefurt into the Weimar road, and stopped at a spot, where, like other travellers, I have often meditated on Goethe's career; and they had from that outlook a majestic view of the setting sun. The great poet and philosopher remained for many minutes in perfect silence, and at last said with mystic but tremorless emphasis, "Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne. Setting, nevertheless the sun is always the same sun. I am fully convinced that our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its activity continues from eternity to eternity." This man knew all philosophies and all art — materialism, realism, pantheism, the wildest scepticism, and, I fear, not a little of the most infamous sensualism; but his was at least a free mind and a modern one. Here, however, was his conclusion concerning the possibility of the existence of the soul in separation from the body: Setting, nevertheless the soul is always the same soul.

121

(GOETHE, Conversations with Eckermann, Trans. by J. Oxenford, Bohn's ed., p. 84.) Will you enter today, my friends, into Goethe's brain at that instant, and remain there during this discussion, lynx-eyed, I care not how thoroughly so, but earnest? It is incontrovertible that we, too, a little while ago, were not in the world, and that we, too, a little while hence, shall be here no longer. The sun hastes to the west as fast at noon as in the last moment before sunset.

New lands in our age can be discovered only in old lands. Schliemann, on the Plain of Troy, has shown us a city of great antiquity; and he has done so by studying an old land beneath its soil. We are reaching the bottom of the Roman forum; we understand, as never before, the environment of the Acropolis, because we are looking with the spade for new lands in the old lands. If a new continent has been discovered anywhere in the last twenty-five years, it has been in the ancient continent of living tissues. We are to enter on that strange country; we draw near to it across turbulent seas; and I think, that, as the Santa Maria ploughs tossing across the waves toward the West, we already begin to see carved wood occasionally, symbol of life behind the watery horizon. Already, as we approach this new continent, do we not find now and then a poor floating spray of red berries? Are these little birds. not of a kind always cradled on the land? Are not the shapes of the very clouds, as the sun goes down, some indication that we shall at last reach the firm,