THE CATALYST ENTELECHY IN DIFFERENTIATION 181 



working largely through the direction of chemical change by 

 catalysis, we must consider what material equipment the fertilized 

 ovum carries with it from its parents. In referring below to what 

 is ordinarily found, we must not forget that in nature curious 

 and unusual things may develop, if they are physically and chem- 

 ically possible. 



This material entelechy is something utterly different from the 

 metaphysical entelechy of Driesch, referred to by Professor Ed- 

 mund W. Sinnott of Yale University. 1 After pointing out that 

 "we have been confusing analysis with solution," and that "it 

 is not an understanding of units we now seek, but of unity," he 

 states that some biologists "have needed little encouragement to 

 run after the strange gods of mysticism and metaphysics and have 

 set up in their midst the golden calf of entelechy. Even those 

 who remain in the ranks of the orthodox speak the unfamiliar 

 language of holism, organicism, metabolic gradients, allometry, 

 organizers, morphogenetic fields, gestalten and other words out- 

 landish in the ear of analytical biology and which for the most 

 part are merely the terminology of enlightened ignorance." Like 

 views are reiterated in his Presidential address before the Amer- 

 ican Society of Naturalists, 2 in which he states: "Organic form is 

 the external manifestation of this underlying biological organiza- 

 tion . . . This integrated and organized behavior, this unity in 

 the midst of diversity, is the most distinctive feature of life in 

 general. What the mechanisms are which underlie it and what 

 is the physicochemical basis by which it is established and persists 

 are deep problems which long have vexed students of develop- 

 ment." He concludes: "Let us try, in these days of intense spe- 

 cialization, to cultivate more of the catholicity of the earlier 

 practioners of our science, and especially to implant in our stu- 

 dents an interest in and respect for all the branches of biology. 

 From somewhere in this wide field — perhaps from where we 

 least expect it now — may come the next new unifying idea which 

 will show how system relates to substance and how life depends 

 on both." 



In the unfertilized ovum, the maternal chromosomes with their 

 genes and aura of adhering substances, are generally afloat in a 

 relatively large pool of maternal cytoplasm. The sperm which 

 enters and fertilizes the ovum brings with it the paternal chro- 

 mosomes with their genes and adherent material, and a much 

 smaller volume of apparently condensed paternal cytoplasm which 



