PROVOCATIVE BIOLOGICAL THEORIES 73 



source of explanation of living organisms, were C. O. 

 Whitman, E. B. Wilson, F. R. Lillie, Jacques Loeb, and 

 more recently, William E. Ritter. 



Whitman's The Inadequacy of the Cell-Theory of De- 

 velopment (1893) initiated the newer conception. He 

 says in this essay : "Comparative embryology reminds us 

 at every turn that the organism dominates cell formation, 

 using for the same purpose one, several, or many cells, 

 massing its materials, directing its movements, and shap- 

 ing its organs, as if cells did not exist, or as if they existed 

 only in complete subordination to its will, if I may so 

 speak." And again, "The fact that physiological unity is 

 not broken by cell boundaries is confirmed in so many 

 ways that it must be accepted as one of the fundamental 

 truths of biology." 



E. B. Wilson followed Professor Whitman's lead with 

 his essay on The Mosaic Theory of Development (1893). 

 Then F. R. Lillie in Properties of the Whole (Principle 

 of Unity), a paper on the development of Chae top terns 

 (1906), a marine worm, brought additional emphasis to 

 this theory as shown by the following extracts from 

 his paper : 



"If any radical conclusion from the immense amount 

 of investigation of the elementary phenomena of devel- 

 opment be justified, this is : That the cells are subordinate 

 to the organism, which produces them and makes them 

 large or small, of a slow or rapid rate of division, causing 

 them to divide, now in this direction, now in that, and in 



