124 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



istic theory, it would thus be necessary to assume that 

 within the bodies of these primitive organisms there is 

 somewhere hidden away all the inconceivable complexity 

 of structure required to account for all future develop- 

 ment. It is only a step further to represent this com- 

 plexity of structure as present in the carbon, nitrogen, 

 and other atoms out of which the primeval organisms 

 arose. In presence of such hypotheses, one feels that 

 it is high time to return to sanity. Nevertheless, they 

 seem to be the logical outcome of a mechanistic inter- 

 pretation of inheritance. 



When we start from the fundamental biological con- 

 ception that life is a whole which determines the nature 

 and activity of its parts, and that is constantly main- 

 taining itself actively by a process of nutrition, we at 

 once get rid of this terrible burden of inconceivable 

 mechanism. The complexity is then no longer in the 

 structure of the parts, but in their relation to the whole. 

 The germ material is no longer complex mechanically, 

 but only complex in its physiological relations to en- 

 vironment ; and whatever an atom may be, its peculiar 

 behaviour in the living body is wrapped up in the unique- 

 ness of its relations there. The germ reproduces the 

 whole organism just as every individual cell or part of 

 a cell in the body is constantly renewing itself in nutrition. 

 There is every gradation between complete reproduction 

 and ordinary nutritive changes such as we can follow by 

 chemical methods, or with the microscope, in gland-cells, 

 or with the naked eye in the reproduction of lost parts, 

 or in the shedding and replacement of leaves on a tree. 

 In the process of reproduction, just as in the process of 

 nutrition, the organism builds the missing structure up 



