Vitaliti/ and Orgcmization of Proto plasm. 11 



construction may seem to be plausible. But when wc desire to learn 

 something more definite regarding this all-efficient intrinsic endowment 

 of each physiological unit, predetermining it to aggregate into the spe- 

 cific form of the adult organism it goes to compose, we are told that 

 "it is a power of whose nature we know nothing;" "a name for some- 

 thing of which we are ignorant;" "a name for a hypothetical property, 

 which as such needs as much explanation as that which it is used to 

 explain." 



Surely, this candid declaration amounts to a full confession that a 

 wholly occult poAver, incapable of explaining anything, has been here 

 arbitrarily invented, and made to account for all morphological and 

 physiological phenomena of life. In mitigation of this sweeping con- 

 fession of utter ignorance concerning the all-efficient power assumed to 

 bo inherent in physiological units, and in order to correlate it with 

 atomic mechanics, Spencer states that polarity "is regarded as a result- 

 ant of forces and motions like those of sensible masses." If so, trans- 

 mitted motion by impact can be the only influence that a physiological 

 unit would be capable of exercising upon others. And this could result 

 only, either in a rearrangement or vibration of their component elements, 

 or in their bodily displacement, or in both these mechanical effects, ' 



How physiological units can acquire under such mechanical actuation 

 their all-efficient specific polarities, x and how the minutely organized 

 form and structures of a complex adult being can be evolved by their 

 being mechanically shaken about, remains not only utterly enigmatical, 

 but must be considered an egregiously inefficient hypothetical conception. 

 Better to have adhered to the original confession of complete ignorance 

 concerning the power that really actuates ontogenetic evolution. 



But, furthermore, how does Spencer, who may rightly be regarded 

 as the first and foremost promulgator of universal evolution in the 

 modern scientific sense; how docs he make the prodigious supply of 

 physiological units arise, needed to compose the comparatively huge bullv 

 of adult organisms? Incredible as it sounds, in utmost contradiction to 

 his fundamental evolutional principle, which asserts that "construed in 

 terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of 

 modifications Avrought by insensible gradations upon a pre-existing kind 

 of being;" in oatright contradiction to this irrefragable law of evolu- 

 tion, he lets the physiological units in countless multitudes come into 

 being by sudden spontaneous generation. Considering that with Spencer 

 the physiological unit is a product of endless pb.yletic evolution, in 

 fact the highest product of evolution on our globe, its spontaneous gen- 

 eration in vast shoals out of mere nutritive material is in the highest 

 degree startling. He tries to mask this assumed spontaneous generation 

 by attributing to existing physiological units "the power of moulfling 

 fit material into other units of the same order." But it would be a truly 

 miraculous power possessed by ph3^siological units, if they were really 

 capable by mere contact with lifeless nutritive material to transmute 

 the same into eminently specific and complex beings of tlie same species 



