Cell-Theory not Sufficient for Explaining Orqanism 195 



tliink of the life of the cell as a property of the cell as a 

 whole. And hence, too, the natural historian's perception 

 that he must, in turn, and by the very same general 

 principles wjiich ouide the physical chemist, insist that life 

 is a property of the orf^anism as a whole. In Whitman's 

 expressive language, the "organism dominates cell forma- 

 tion," exactly as, by imi)lication, Hopkins' language jus- 

 tifies us in asserting that the cell dominates the "molecules" 

 of the living substances of which it is constituted. 



Likewise the "morphological \)\di\\ of the organism" men- 

 tioned by Carrel and Burrows as something to which the 

 tissues "must adapt themselves in their development" (see 

 quotation in section on tissue cultures) is really the counter- 

 part in natural history language of the cell as an "organized 

 laboratory" in biochemical language. And the "unknown 

 factor" which Carrel and Burrows assume must be added 

 to the "morphological plan of the organism" to explain the 

 compulsory adaptation of the differentiating tissues, is sup- 

 plied by physical chemistry so far as the cell is concerned, 

 in the dynamical, the self-equilibrating system of phases 

 recognized as constituting the cell. 



But when the perception is reached, as it is through our 

 examination, that in reality the term "organism" should 

 take the place of "cell" in biochemical language, the organ- 

 ism no longer appears as a morphological entity merely, but 

 as a dynamical, a physiological entity as well, and the "un- 

 known factor" is sup])lied in the organism-as-a-whole. Once 

 such a conception of life becomes as clear as it is inevitable, 

 a seemingly overwhelming difficulty looms up in the fact 

 that "the organism" as natural history is compelled to deal 

 with it is infinite in number, theoretically if not practically. 

 For nothing is more patent than that individual organisms 

 are the primary material of natural history, and no gen- 

 eralization of natural history is better grounded than that 

 no two individuals are quite alike. From which it results 



