206 The Unity of the Organism 



The Bearing of This Critique on "Analysis" in Biological 



Reasoning 



The considerations thus briefly set forth lead to certain 

 still more general ideas of the utmost importance. The 

 natural entities to which we apply the descriptive terms 

 living and organic are specially distinguished by the chem- 

 ical and physical syntheses which they accomplish by virtue 

 of their inherent constitution. So as concerns the most 

 characteristic of these syntheses, especially the chemical 

 ones, they are to a very considerable and fundamental ex- 

 tent definitive of the organic individual, species, genus, and 

 so on, of taxonomic biology. This is equivalent to saying 

 that the synthetic operations regarded each by itself ter- 

 minate in results which are in large measure unique and so 

 unforeseeable from anything we know about the original 

 elements as such; that is, before they have actually been 

 subjected to the particular synthetic transformations under 

 consideration. 



And this again is equivalent to saying that synthesis 

 transformatory synthetic processes and products is more 

 distinctive of living beings than are analytic products and 

 processes. 



Finally, it follows from these facts about the synthetic 

 nature of organisms, and from the established principles of 

 thought, that analysis alone is incapable of interpreting, of 

 understanding organic beings. No natural object which in 

 its nature is more distinctively synthetic than analytic can 

 be understood by knowledge-processes which are more ana- 

 lytic than synthetic. 



This conclusion goes to the very heart of the elementalistic 

 position, and, as stated in the discussion on internal secre- 

 tions, is really as much an epistemological as a biological 

 problem. 



Reverting again to Loeb's writings, the conclusion to 



