ORGANIZATION 



INTRODUCTION, 



Tlie interpretation of vital phenomena given in the former section 

 rests not on hypothetical assumptions, but on the direct obsen^ation of 

 visible and always verifiable manifestations. Its principal outcome, 

 besides the scientific explanation of vitality, consists in having estab- 

 lished the fact that the organism is essentially an indiscerptible whole, 

 and not an assemblage of autonomous elementary units; that all its 

 parts are integrant and not mere aggregated constituents; that its 

 structure and form can nowise be explained as the result of a coming 

 together and marshaling of a multitude of separate beings, nor its 

 functions as the automatically co-operative activity of a host of ele- 

 mentary units. Form, structure and function are, on the contrary, the 

 work of a self-roimded cycle of interdependent chemical activities, 

 which constitutes the unitary individual's vitality or life. 



Organisms are avowedly protoplasmic individuals, products of the 

 phyletic elaboration of the living substance, of which they are all com- 

 posed. It has been shown that all essential vital phenomena: irritability, 

 specific reaction, motility, assimilation, growth and reproduction, natu- 

 rally result from the power of the living substance to restitute itself to 

 full integrity or identity when functionally disintegrated, and also to 

 an astonishing degree when artificially fragmented. The maintenance 

 and reconstitution of the integrity or identity of the organism as a 

 whole is the essential conjoint work of all vital functions. 



It has been proved by many striking examples, that artificial frag- 

 ments, not only of so-called imicellular organisms, but also of highly 

 complex "multicellular" organisms, have the power to restitute or re- 

 generate the specific structure and form of the adult individual from 

 which they are derived. And it has been here clearly demonstrated 

 that this power of fragments to reconstruct the whole is due to their 

 being specific chemical fragments endowed with the faculty of regen- 

 erating themselves by complemcntal assimilation of nutritive material, 

 or even by transformation of tLcir own substance, so as eventually to 

 reform the typical whole of which they are a fragment. And it has K ^jH-t-^u'*!' J- '-^ 

 also been shown that the living substance is a^ chemically cumulating j 



substance which involves the formation of the axes of organic individ- 

 uals; their basal and apical "polarity," their oral and aboral pole, their 

 bilaterality, and transverse axial distinctions; fundamental vital proper- 

 ties hitherto altogether enigmatic. 



No aggregational theory of reproduction, even when formulated by 



