Jknnings, Uexkull on Physiology of Behavior. 335 



in biology one combination produces a sea urchin, another a star- 

 fish. Throughout both chemistry and biology we find unpredictable 

 results produced by new combinations. The repeated changes shown 

 by the development of an organism seem, as to intelligibility, quite 

 on a par with a series of transformations due to recombinations of 

 chemicals. If in either field the same combination under the same 

 conditions should sometimes produce one result, sometimes another, 

 then indeed science would l)e in distress, and if Inology were the 

 field in which this occurred, then the biologist might ])erhaps grasp 

 at vitalism as a drowning man grasps at a straw. Our cpiotation 

 from V. Uexkiill (given above, }). 310), in which he holds that 

 Driesch has shown that the germ cell ''does not possess a trace of 

 machine-like structure, but consists of throughout equivalent parts" 

 and that it is "structureless," perhaps implies that he conceives 

 this distressing condition to have been reached. But those who have 

 spent years in working with the astoundingly complex machine- 

 like structures and processes in the chromatin of the germ cell, and 

 have considered the demonstrative evidence brought forward by 

 Boveri, Wilson, Herbst and many others as to the distinctive func- 

 tions of these various parts in development, will find the statement 

 that the germ cell is structureless and composed of throughout equiva- 

 lent parts so absolutely schenuitic and fictitious as to omit all the 

 truth! 



Taking verifiableness as our aim will likewise leave biology and 

 physiology resting peacefully in union. We shall be interested in 

 the ])lan of the organism so far as it is vcrlfiahlr; and to work out 

 the verifiable plan we shall be forced to consider the actual forces, 

 materials and arrangements, not fictitious ones. Doubtless physiol- 

 ogy has in practice become narrowed ; the remedy lies in broadening 

 it till it includes everything verifial)le in the study of the processes 

 of organisms. 



Criticism of theoretical points is not a proper close for a con- 

 sideration of work of such solid value as that of v. Uexkiill. Though 

 we may differ from him in theoretical ideal and in method of pres- 

 entation, we must recognize the fundamental soundness of his 

 methods of actual work. ITever was a truer j^rinciple set forth for 



