Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm. 57 



affords sufficient proof that cells, as such^ are not the essential agents in 

 ontogenetic evolution. And he finds himself compelled to conclude, "that 

 the organism is not the sum total of the actions and interactions of its 

 cells; but has_a struchire .of_its own^independ^ of. tlT£ .ijellg." ^Yhit- 

 man, 1893, published a paper, Journ. of Morph., viii, "On the inadequacy 

 of the Cell-Theory of Development." And a number of other inves- 

 tigators have likewise arrived, more or less positively, at the concep- 

 tion that the construction of the whole is, in the words of Driesch, "the 

 clearly recognized goal of the entire process of development." 



The recognition that the whole is potentially predetermined even in 

 fragments of egg-plasm excludes the possibility of its multifold struc- 

 tural differentiations being represented in the germ-plasm each by a 

 separate germinal unit, and consequently of its being constructed by 

 an aggregation of autonomous cellular beings. The present writer has 

 on the strength of his protoplasmic researches strenuously opposed the 

 cell-theory, and advocated the unity of the organic individual for the 

 Tast twenty-five years in a number of publications. I concluded my arti- 

 cles' entitled "The IIiut;5L.pf. the Organic Indiyidual," Mind, 1880, with 

 the following sentence: "To contradistinguish the theory of organiza- 

 tion here briefly expounded from the prevailing cell-theory I call it 

 the theorx, of Specification ; specification . of a single protoplasmic unit 

 into definite areas of disparate stimulation; not association of a number 

 of elementary organisms for the purpose of dividing among themselves 

 a hypostasised physiological labor."* 



But here the question naturally arises,^how the whole, which is Jiot 

 ^actually presen^t, which in fact is not yet in existence can possibly exert 

 a preponderantly directive influence upon the evolution of the germ- 

 plasm. The ancient puzzle of the priority of the whole over its parts, 

 so fateful in philosophical discussions of the conceptual order, and pop- 

 ularly expressed in the riddle: "What is first in existence, the hen or 

 the e^gT' This profound puzzle, philosophically as well as bologic- 

 ally, finds its solution by recognizing that the germ-plasm is not an 

 aggregate of separate and disparate units, nor anything like an elemen- 

 tary organism; but that all reproductive plasm is really a ch emical 

 fragment of the whole from which it is derived, endowed as such, by 

 force of its indwelling most specific affinities, with the power of regen- 

 erating it by means of gradual reintegration. The germ-cell far from 

 being an elementary organism, is, on the contrarv, the potential embodi- 

 ment of all phyletic elaboration. 



Without this chemico-vital conception, scientifically justified by actual 

 observation and definite experimental results, thoughtful investigators 

 will find themselves inevitably driven to vitalism of the deus exjnachina 

 kind ; for it is certain that vital phenomena are hypermechanical and 

 speciflcally vital. Of course, it has always to be borne in mind that 



*See also "The Dependence of Quality on Specific Energies," "Mind," Jan- 

 uary, 1880, and "Are We Cell Aggregates?" "Mind," January, 1882. 



