and that it is in its protoplasm that the chemists should be able to find the compounds, the special albuminoids, which, par excellence, form living matter.
§ 3. The Physical Constitution of Living
Matter. The Micellar Theory.
Physical Constitution of Living Matter.—Microscopic examination does not take us much farther. The microscope, with the strongest magnification of which it is capable at present, shows us nothing beyond these links of aligned microsomes forming the species of protoplasmic thread or mitome, whose cellular body is a confused tangle or a very tangled ball. It is not probable that direct sight can penetrate much farther than this. No doubt the microscope, which has been so vastly improved, is capable of still further improvement. But these improvements are not indefinite. We have already reached a linear magnification of 2000, and theory tells us that a magnification of 4000 is the limit which cannot be passed. The penetrating power of the instrument is therefore near its culminating point. It has already given almost all that we have a right to expect from it.
We must, however, penetrate beyond this microscopic structure at which the sense of sight has been arrested. How is this to be done? When observation is arrested, hypothesis takes its place. Here there are two kinds of hypotheses, the one purely anatomical, the other physical. Anatomically, beyond the visible microsomes there have been imagined invisible hyper-microscopic corpuscles, the plastidules
