234 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



As for our second proof of vitalism, stating that no kind 

 of machine inside the germ-cells can possibly be the 

 foundation of their morphogenesis, it is clear that the 

 protoplasm and the nucleus may both come into account 

 here on equal terms. If you prefer to say so, it is to the 

 nucleus and to its division in particular that the second 

 proof of autonomy relates, while the first, though not over- 

 looking the presence of nuclei, 1 deals " especially " with the 

 protoplasmic nature of its " systems." 



What then can we say, on the basis of actual facts, about 

 the part taken by the protoplasm and by the nucleus in 

 inheritance, now that we have learnt from our analytical 

 discussion that both of them cannot be any kind of 

 morphogenetic machine, but can only be means of morpho- 

 genesis ? Let us state our question in the following way : 

 whereabouts in the germ - cells are those " means ' of 

 morphogenesis localised, the existence of which we infer 

 from the material continuity in the course of generations 

 in general and from the facts discovered about hybridisa- 

 tion in particular ? 



The first of the facts generally said to support the 

 view that the nucleus of the germ-cells exerts a specified 

 influence upon the processes of development and inheritance, 

 relates to the proportion between protoplasm and nuclear 



1 The first proof of vitalism, indeed, rests upon the analysis of the 

 differentiation of an harmonious-equipotential system as a ivhole : this whole 

 cannot be a machine that would relate to differentiation as a whole ; the 

 question whether there might be any machines distributed in the whole, in 

 the form of the nuclei is of no importance at all in this argument. Moreover 

 the pressure experiments (see page 63) prove the unimportance of such 

 "machines" for the specificity of differentiation, and the second proof of 

 vitalism shows that the nuclei cannot be regarded as machines accounting for 

 differentiation in any way. 



