The essential feature of the true hierarchical division is that the subcomponents are integrated into a new wholeness relationship, and from here experience a feedback influence and determination. If one constantly keeps this in mind, then it makes no difference whether one -- not considering the so-called intercellular substance -- views the higher organism as cell-state (but distinguished from cell-colonies with division of labor and function) ot not. Not the word referring to something is important but the structure of that to what the word refers.
In a certain way this also applies to atoms within a molecule, and when we choose for it not, it is true, the most suitable example -- because containing wholly specific factors -- but certainly the most striking example, then it is the qualitative difference between the Na and Cl ions in table salt in contrast to the free elements [of which one is a metal (sodium) and the other a green poisonous gas (chlorine)].
The tenacious image of cell-aggregate is maintained on the one hand as a result of the embryological developmental and regenerative processes of growth, and as a result of the organismic and histologic analysis, on the other.