CRITICAL REMARKS, ETC. 503 



Yet, in truth, neither Mr. Bourne, Professor Whitman, 

 Professor Nageli, Professor Weismann nor any other in- 

 ventors of such mental images are to be blamed, or in the 

 least disesteemed for their failure in presenting satisfactory 

 explanations. Such failure is but the inevitable result of 

 attempting the impossible. However we may minimise or 

 subdivide such supposed material elements, the same diffi- 

 culty will ever recur. In the same way as when we seek to 

 explain the physiology of an organism by the functions of 

 its "cells," each cell so considered becomes but an organism 

 itself " writ small " ; so every biophor, idiosome, etc., of a 

 cell again becomes the cell, 1 again "writ small". This is the 

 case with the " molecules " also, since the mere juxtaposition 

 of functionless, similar particles can never account for vital 

 phenomena, such as growth and reproduction, to say no- 

 thino- of sensation and reflex consciousness ! However 

 we may play with such images by the aid of a subtle and 

 fertile imao-ination the same inevitable and insoluble diffi- 

 culty will ever recur. Indeed the most fertile producer of 

 imaginary hypotheses of our own day, has really made this 

 confession by declaring that so long as we know practically 

 nothing about the forces which act in and among biophors, 

 they cannot afford us what he regards as an explanation of 

 vital phenomena. 



We can decline to seek for any explanation and then 

 we may rest contented with the formula of epigenesis, 

 which sums up the facts which we can perceive by the aid 

 of our senses. But if we seek, as our nature impels us to 

 seek, a cause which may explain the facts of epigenesis we 

 shall be forced to have recourse to one of a radically differ- 

 ent nature. Mr. Bourne does not seem to see this for he says r 



1 Mr. Bourne softens down somewhat too much the difference which has 

 been commonly thought to exist between unicellular and multicellular 

 organisms. I welcome, however, the minimising of that difference, for I 

 cannot regard the contractile fibre of Vorticella as something essentially 

 different from a muscular fibre, for the sole reason that the former is the 

 product of a single cell. The real equivalent in a man of the single cell of 

 Vorticella is, for me, nothing less than the man's whole body. 



2 p. 113. 



