THE GENESIS OF LIVING ORGANISMS 205 



nothing of music, the dispute has lost all point, for there 

 are no notes any longer ; there are nothing but ink- blots. 



Undoubtedly it is true that every written note, materially 

 considered, is an ink-blot, and, as certainly, every property 

 of the organism has a material basis. But to find in the 

 properties of living matter nothing more than the expression 

 of a dance of atoms is not only to be hard of hearing but to 

 be stone-deaf. 



Matters being so, it is quite useless to try to convince 

 scientists with an eye only for mechanical and chemical 

 problems, that there are biological problems as well. But 

 we may hope that the younger men, who are not yet com- 

 mitted by oath to the dogma of materialism, will let them- 

 selves be convinced of the existence of life-factors, the more 

 especially as continued investigations have brought ever 

 further confirmation of Mendel's doctrine. Jennings has 

 shown the immutability of the properties in Paramecium 

 right through thousands of generations, when all crossing 

 was excluded. Driesch, in quite a different way, has proved 

 that there is no framework present in the germ. Histological 

 research has found that, at maturation of the ovum, half 

 the chromosomes are cast out ; and this is confirmatory of 

 Mendel's doctrine, which states that in the sex-ceUs the genes 

 are simplified every time. . 



But that it is the nucleus with its chromosomes which 

 alone has the power to hand on the genes, was proved through 

 Boveri's classical experiment. Boveri succeeded in fertilis- 

 ing an enucleated sea-urchin egg with the sperm of a different 

 species, and in this way he got offspring possessing only 

 paternal characters. 



From all sides confirmation and supplementary evidence 

 were soon forthcoming, which ensured that the MendeHan 

 theory was not merely called on to set the breeding of plants 

 and animals on a secure basis, but, by creating a doctrine of 



