Since these discoveries our knowledge of the methods of cell-division has much increased; and in the light of our modern knowledge of these matters there is nothing in all nature more marvellous than the regular orderly way in which cells reproduce themselves according to fixed laws.  Certain cells in the developing embryo, for example, are early set apart for a particular function or for building certain structures, and thereafter are never diverted from this duty so as to do a different work or produce a different kind of structure.  In the young embryo certain structures arise at certain predestined times in particular places, and only there and out of these cells alone.  As to why it should be so, we cannot tell, save as the result of deliberate design and as an expression of the order-loving mind of the God of nature.  In the words of one of the greatest of modern authorities, “We still do not know why a certain cell becomes a gland-cell, another a gangleon-cell; why one cell gives rise to smooth muscle-fiber, while a neighbor forms voluntary muscle....  It is daily becoming more apparent that epigenesis with the three layers of the germ furnishes no explanation of developmental phenomena."[11]

[Footnote 11:  Nature, May 23, 1901.]

In accordance with the general principle of a division of labor, certain cells become early set apart to particular functions, and in accordance with the varying demands of these functions the developing cells may become greatly changed in form and in vital characteristics.  That is, one cell specializes, let us say, in secretion, another in contractility, another in receiving and carrying stimuli, etc.  In this way we will have the gland-cell, the muscle-cell, and the nerve-cell, each cell destined to produce one of these organs developing others “after its kind,” the result being that it is soon surrounded with numerous companions doing a similar work, making up in this way a particular tissue or organ—­gland, muscle, or nerve—­which in the aggregate has for its function the work of the particular cells composing it.

But the important thing for us to remember in this connection is that when cells once become thus differentiated off and dedicated to any particular function, they can never grow or develop into any distinctly different type of cell with other and different functions.  It is true that through pathologic degeneration the form and even the function of cells may become greatly changed; but never does it amount to a complete metamorphosis or complete transformation into another distinctly different type.

This is a very important principle, and it contains so many lessons for us bearing on the philosophy of life in general that it may be allowable to establish this fact by several somewhat lengthy quotations from standard authorities.

The first will be from one of the highest authorities on embryology, Charles Sedgwick Minot, of Harvard: