14 The Unity of the Organism 



the course of embryonic development by the secondary 

 adaptation of originally independent parts to one another; 

 But this explanation has, in my opinion, become untenable, 

 and must be replaced by the view that there are certain 

 properties of the whole, constituting a principle of unity of 

 organization, that are part of the original inheritance and 

 thus continue through the cycles of the generations, 

 and do not arise anew in each. Weismann places this prin- 

 ciple of unity of organization in the architecture of the 

 germ-plasm, but, as I cannot accept his view of vast com- 

 plexity of the germ-plasm, neither can I accept this prin- 

 ciple in the, sense of Weismann." ^^ . . . "If any radical 

 conclusion from the immense amount of investigation of the 

 elementary phenomena of development be justified this is: 

 That the cells are subordinate to the organism, which pro- 

 duces them, and makes them large or small, of a slow or 

 rapid rate of division, causes them to divide, now in this 

 direction, now in that, and in all respects so disposes them 

 that the latent being comes to full expression. . . . The 

 organism is primary, not secondary ; it is an individual, not 

 by virtue of the cooperation of countless lesser individual- 

 ities, but an individual that produces these lesser individu- 

 alities. . . . The persistence of organization is a primary 

 law of embryonic development." ^^ 



Without looking further into recent and contemporaneous 

 literature, enough has been brought forward to show that 

 the organismal standpoint has a solid footing in current 

 biological theory. We should, however, be grievously amiss 

 should we conclude that because the theory has captured 

 one stronghold it lias won the whole battle. As a matter 

 of fact, the very men who have admitted the rights of the 

 organism as against its cells in development are yet far 

 from admitting those rights as a general proposition; that 

 is, as against all the elements of whatever order that enter 

 into its makeup. Thus Whitman says, "If the formative 



