VitalUij (Did Organization of Protoplasm. 15 



tlietical wave-motion. It must, consequently, be at bottom the chem- 

 ical constitution of the plastidule which undergoes developmental 

 changes. And who will venture to assert that such evolving chemical 

 changes are caused by the plastidule remembering, and therewith re- 

 producing the series of wave-motions phyletically impressed upon it? 



The ontogenetic problem consists essentially in accounting for the 

 gradual chemical and structural evolution of the germ-cell into the 

 disparate tissues of the adult organism, and, surely, a hypothesis at- 

 tributing ontogenetic evolution to the reproduction of cumulating wave- 

 motions originated by memory is on the face of it an inept fiction. 



Moreover, it is wholly incomprehensible liow a progressive wave- 

 motion can at all be transmitted in all its phyletic complexity to random 

 nutritive material, so as to coerce it into chemical compounds of the 

 same elaborated constitution as that possessed by the original wave- 

 emitting plastidules. A profuse multiplication of plastidules is re- 

 quired to build up the bulk of the adult organism. Can it possibly be 

 furnished by mere contact of phyletically elaborated plastidules with 

 nutritive material? No chemical compound whatever, much less one 

 so highly wrought as a plastidule is held to be, can proliferate by trans- 

 forming adjacent matter of a different kind into its own likeness. If 

 this mode of proliferation really occurred, it would amount, in the case 

 of a plastidule, to the spontaneous generation of the most highly evolved 

 autonomous being in existence ; for such the theory asserts it to be. The 

 plastidules, as ultimate bearers of all vital efficiencies, are therewith 

 conceived to be the real organisms, of which the adult being is then a 

 mere ordered aggregate. 



The ontogenetic problem seeks to find out by what means any kind of 

 organism becomes reproduced, be it elementary or complex, be it a mere 

 plastidule or the highest organism, and it is clear that Haeckel's hy- 

 pothesis nowise contributes towards its solution. N"or does it contribute 

 to the solution of the vexed problem of the formation of the germ-cell 

 itself, as bearer of all ontogenetic potentialities. It leaves in the dark 

 where its constituent plastidules originate, and how an appropriate 

 assortment of the same comes to be collected in the sundry germ-cells. 

 Nor, again,-- is it in the least clear how it happens that the plastidules 

 are what may be really called alive. To hypothetically endow their 

 component atoms and themselves with psychical faculties renders nowise 

 their own vitality and that of the adult organism scientifically intelli- 

 gible. Strangest of all, that Hacckel should call this psychically actu- 

 ated vital theory "mechanical." 



Furthermore, and finally, Haeckel, a cell-theorist par excellence, dis- 

 integrates in this his molecular theory of reproduction the absolutistie 

 "Zellenstaat," of which, according to his view, we ourselves, and other 

 complex organisms are a mere collective appearance. For, assuming 

 the cells to be mere clusters of individualized plastidules, their own 

 autonomous individuality is completely lost by thus delegating all vital 

 properties and activities to the plastidules composing them. Here also 



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