12 Vitality and -Organization of Protoplasm. 



as themselves. Such sudden production of these his highest single beings 

 on earth would afford a striking confirmation of the "special creation 

 hypothesis/' to whose refutation Spencer has bent all his energies. 



But let a sufficient supply of physiological units be somehow furnished. 

 From what source would they then derive their implied vitality? A 

 physiological unit is, after all, conceived as a mere self-rounded chem- 

 ical compound, though of a far more complex composition than other 

 organic substances. At what stage of its phyletic elaboration could any- 

 thing of a vital character have originated within it? Being, in fact, 

 only a vastly complex chemical molecule, it could, if it really existed, 

 be no more alive than any other chemical molecule. No manner of 

 impressibility, due to its complex nature, could possibly invest it with 

 any property that might rightly be called vital. And no ever so vast 

 aggregate of them, however grouped, could display the least trace of 

 vital activity. 



The fundamental assumptions of Spencer's hypothesis of Polarigencsis 

 having proved utterly inadequate, the hypothesis itself has to be pro- 

 nounced an out and out failure. 



The belief in the universal sway of atomic mechanics is accountable 

 for this, and for similar theories of organic evolution. Starting with 

 material atoms as building material, and taking their spatial arrange- 

 ment into definite forms to- be simply the effect of mechanical modes 

 of motion, theorists are readily led to ascribe definite shapes, and there- 

 with definite directions of tension to their 'hypothetical units, believed 

 to compose definitely shaped bodies. The specific structure and form 

 of the latter, whether of organic or inorganic consistency, are then con- 

 ceived as resulting from the equilbration of the shapes and tensions of 

 the component units. But in such atomo-mechanical structures, if by 

 mosaic-like arrangement of such material units the highly differentiated 

 frame of complex organisms could really be constructed, there would 

 be found in it no possible nook or crevice for vital activities to enter, and 

 become functionally operative. The juxtajjosition of myriads of non- 

 living elements, however grouped, can never result in the production 

 of a living being. 



Pangenesis — Darwin* 



Darwin formulated his "provisional hypothesis of Pangenesis" under 

 the conviction that like can produce only like ; and under the further 

 conviction that complex organisms are really aggregates of diversely 

 constituted autonomous cellular beincjs. Accepting the«e prevailing 

 biological doctrines, he found himself logically constrained to conceive 

 the germ cell, not as a genuine elementary organism, but as an asseuv- 

 blage of reproductive "gemmules" derived from each different kind of 

 adult cells. For the adult cells, as autonomous lieings. liave necessarily 



* See also '"Panii^enesis," p. 701 ; Jeiinisclio /citsclirift fiir Xatiii-wi^zpn- 

 schaft, vol. XVIU, 1882. 



