CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FIRST MAIN PART OF THESE 



LECTURES 



In finishing our chapter on inheritance, we at the same 

 time have finished the first main part of our lectures ; that 

 part of them which has been devoted exclusively to the 

 study of the morphogenesis of the individual, including 

 the functioning of the adult individual form. We now 

 turn to our second part, which is to deal with the problems 

 of the diversities of individual forms, with morphological 

 systematics. The end of our chapter on inheritance has 

 already led us to the threshold of this branch of biological 

 science. 



The chief result of the first main part of our lectures 

 has been to prove that an autonomy of life phenomena 

 exists at least in some departments of individual mor- 

 phogenesis, and probably in all of them ; the real starting- 

 point of all morphogenesis cannot be regarded as a machine, 

 nor can the real process of differentiation, in all cases 

 where it is based upon systems of the harmonious equi- 

 potential type. There cannot be any sort of machine in 

 the cell from which the individual originates, because this 

 cell, including both its protoplasm and its nucleus, has 

 undergone a long series of divisions, all resulting in equal 

 products, and because a machine cannot be divided and in 



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