48 WHITMAN. [VoL. II. 
plex chemico-organic units, bound together by subtle chemico- 
physiological bonds, and displaying in their collective capacity 
functions and powers which are entirely foreign to them as 
individual and isolated elements, and which are therefore indis- 
solubly identified with the physiological connexus or consensus. 
Vague and unsatisfactory as such a view may appear, and 
as the best possible view must be from the limitations of our 
knowledge, it may yet contribute something towards a clearer 
conception of what we have called the formative power of the 
cell. It will be sufficiently clear now that we have not in mind 
a phantom-form which, like a mould, impresses its shape upon 
plastic material; but a power which represents the resultant of 
the consentient reactions of indwelling forces. Such a power 
declares itself in every living organism and in every developing 
germ. 
The action of the formative power has often been likened to 
the architectural power displayed in crystallization ; and if the 
essential distinctions are kept in view, such a comparison is 
justified by one or two very instructive analogies. If the physi- 
cist is not compelled to recognize a special crystallizing force, 
he is at least unable to deny that a crystalline aggregate reacts 
upon the parts in such a manner as to determine the direction 
of that marvellous “constructive power” with which the mole- 
cules are endowed. When we see a crystal reproduce its lost 
apex ; or, as in the oft-cited experiment of Lavalle, an angle of 
an octohedral crystal spontaneously replaced by a surface, as 
the result of an artificially produced surface at the correspond- 
ing angle, we have no alternative but to infer a physzcal correla- 
tion of parts, under the influence of which the drectzon of forces 
is determined. So in the development of a germ, in the repair 
of injured parts, and in the regeneration of lost parts, the fact 
is irresistibly forced upon us, that the organism as a whole con- 
trols the formative processes going on in each part. The forma- 
tive power then belongs only to the organism as a physiological 
whole ; and it does not represent a sum or aggregate of atomic, 
molecular, or other forces, but results from special combinations 
of ultra-molecular units, and disappears as such the moment the 
physiological connexus is destroyed. 
This idea may appear, at first sight, to stand in contradiction 
with the fact that parts of an organism, resulting from sponta- 
