Herrick, Physiological Problems. 365 



entire complexly equilibrated system (regulation). The lost part 

 may be restored without specific nervous direction. 



9. The nervous system being a special related equilibrated 

 system directly harmonized with and representing the sum of bodily 

 functions, it is particularly impressed by the total locus formula 

 of the entire organism and will be of especial importance in regener- 

 ative function as particularly a result of the direct trophic mechan- 

 ism. Inasmuch as the nervous system is of comparatively late 

 origin in phylogeny, it follow^s that the nervous control is not speci- 

 fic upon individual cells of the somatic structure but is related to 

 more or less complicated systems of equilibration within the body 

 (organo-taxy not cyto-taxy). The nervous system shares with the 

 body the power of receiving the efi^ect of the total activity but in a 

 greatly exalted degree. 



10. The coordinate complex of the adult organism is the 

 mathematical outgrowth of the expansion of a certain simple locus 

 formula representing activities which begin the career under great 

 intensity of action, giving them a pow^erful assimilative attraction. 

 The single energic units of (say) a germ cell may be most complex 

 and under the conditions afforded it may gather to itself or generate 

 multitudes of other energic units in the formula of each oi which 

 are vestiges of the parent cell; or, in other words, traces of the orig- 

 inal formula persist. But certain elements so collected do not 

 proceed with the differentiation at once but remain as germ cells 

 capable under suitable conditions of propagating new composite 

 individuals. 



Contrasting this with current views, we find that, in the lan- 

 guage of what we may call the Darwin-Weismann period: "The 

 dissimilarity in form, size, and arrangement of the micella in the 

 idioplasm provides for innumerable combinations of the active 

 forces" (Naegeli, Abstammungslehre, p. 26), and these are 

 responsible for the innumerable varieties of chemical and plastic 

 phenomena produced thereby; and thus result the variations m 

 growth, inner organization, external form, and arrangement. 



This manifoldness in the constitution of the idioplasm is 

 increased by the fact that each micella may have a different chemi- 

 cal composition. From this point of view structural complexity 

 is the cause of variety of function and the total behavior of an ani- 

 mal is directly a function of an algebraic sum of the structural 

 elements. 



