320 The Unity of the Organism 



with the chromatin-clements of the Protista. 



One of the most significant things about this particular 

 development of chromosomal elementalism is its relation to 

 the plasmic elementalism as first set forth by Dujardin, and 

 later by Haeckel in his Moneron theory. An essential aim of 

 the last mentioned theory was to reduce "life" to an ultimate 

 simplicity in the sense of conceiving it as once manifesting 

 itself without organized substance — in "organless organ- 

 isms," as Haeckel liked to express it. Minchin criticizes with 

 due severity the "phantom" Moneron which has been "per- 

 mitted to masquerade for many years under the false appear- 

 ance of an objective phenomenon of Nature." ^ But cu- 

 riously, he appears not to have noticed that so far as objec- 

 tivity and logic are concerned his proposal is merely to 

 displace the phantom Moneron by the phantom Biococcus. 

 The question of structurelessness versus organization is no 

 less pressing in the one case than in the other, as indeed 

 Minchin's own statement shows. "The earliest forms of 

 life were 'Biococci,' minute ultramicroscopic particles of 

 mycoplasm, without organization," he says in presenting 

 Mereschkowsky's theory. ^^ 



A theory of chromatin hegemony less startling than this 

 by Minchin, but hardly more satisfactory when viewed in the 

 full light of fact and logic, has recently been elaborated by 

 H. F. Osborn. Osborn's theory does not, he thinks, require 

 him to conceive chromatin to be actually the primal organic 

 substance. It is more probable, he holds, that "chromatin 

 and protoplasm are coexistent in cells from the earliest 

 known stages." ^^ But the author's central purpose, that 

 of working toward "an energy conception of Evolution 

 and an energy conception of Heredity and away from 

 the matter and form conceptions which have prevailed 

 for over a century," ^- permits him to pass over rather 

 lightly the morphology of the hypothetical first Life. It is 

 clear, though, that *'heredity-chromatin,'^ a term which he 



