278 REGENERATION 



phyl bodies, etc., that repeat on a smaller scale some of the 

 fundamental properties of the entire organism, as growth and divi- 

 sion. It has been assumed that still farther down in the structure 

 there are smaller units having the same properties, and the smallest 

 of these are the ultimate units. The organism is looked upon as the 

 result of the properties of these minute germs. The gemmules of 

 Darwin furnish an example of an hypothesis of this sort ; also the 

 intracellular pangens of De Vries, the plasomes of Wiesner, the bio- 

 phors of Weismann, the idiosomes of Hertwig, and the micellae of 

 Nageli are other examples of this way of interpreting the organization. 

 These elements are endowed by their inventors with certain properties, 

 and these are of such a sort that they give the appearance of an explana- 

 tion to organic phenomena. It is useless to object to these hypotheses 

 that they are purely ideal, or fictitious, and that those properties have 

 been assigned to the germs that will bring about the desired explana- 

 tion, and have not been shown to be the real properties of the germs 

 themselves. But apart from the arbitrariness of the process, it cannot 

 be claimed that a single one of these creations has been shown to be 

 true, or has even been accepted by zoologists as probable. A more 

 serious objection to this point of view is that the most fundamental 

 characteristics of the organism, those that concern growth, develop- 

 ment, regeneration, etc., seem to involve in many cases the organism 

 as a whole. So many examples of this have been given in the preceding 

 pages, that it is not necessary to go over the ground again. It has 

 been shown that a change in one part takes place in relation to all 

 other parts, and it is this interconnection of the parts that is one of the 

 chief peculiarities of the organism. In phenomena of this kind even 

 the cells seem to play a secondary part, and if so, we can, I think, 

 safely leave out of account the smaller units of which the protoplasm 

 is supposed to be built up and we can neglect them, if for no other 

 reason than this, that the argument that has called them into existence 

 starts out with the cell as the highest unit. If the cell can be thrown 

 out, most probably the units of which the cell itself is supposed to be 

 made up can be safely disregarded also. 



It may be objected that only through a knowledge of the minute 

 structure of the organism can we hope to understand the behavior of 

 the whole ; but my point of view is not that there may not be a funda- 

 mental structure, but that this is not formed by a repetition of ele- 

 ments, which give to the whole its fundamental properties. It can be 

 shown, I think, with some probability that the forming organism is of 

 such a kind that we can better understand its action when we con- 

 sider it as a whole and not simply as the sum of a vast number of 

 smaller elements. To draw again a rough parallel; just as the 

 properties of sugar are peculiar to the molecule and cannot be ac- 



