436 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Koux in his work on the ' Struggle of the Parts in 

 the Organism,' was hailed by Darwin as " the most 

 important book on development that has appeared 

 for some time." 1 In modern books on physiology the 

 process of selection is a familiar conception; but if in 

 natural history, in the life of plants and insects, there 

 still remain many extraordinary instances of selection 



1 The work appeared in 1880, 

 and is referred to by Darwin in 

 a letter to Romanes (' Life and 

 Letters,' vol. iii. p. 244 ; 16th 

 April 1881), where he suggests 

 also a similar consideration of 

 plant life and structure. It 

 has been republished in Roux's 

 ' Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur 

 Entwickelungsmechanik der Organ- 

 ismen ' (Leipzig, 1895, 2 vols. ), with 

 an interesting preface (vol. i. p^- 

 139, &c. ), and many historical and 

 critical digressions. It originally 

 emanated from the earliest school 

 of Darwinism in Germany, repre- 

 sented by Haeckel, Gegenbaur, and 

 Preyer, at Jena. It has been 

 found very suggestive, and has 

 been the beginning of a very 

 large controversial literature in 

 Germany, in which the funda- 

 mental problems of biology have 

 been discussed, and have received 

 new formulations. The idea of the 

 struggle of individuals for survival, 

 suggested by Darwin, is applied by 

 Roux to the different parts and 

 organs within the developing or- 

 ganism. Du Bois-Reyrnond almost 

 contemporaneously published his 

 brilliant and celebrated address 

 on "Exercise" ("Ueber die 

 tTebung," 'Reden,' vol. ii. p. 404). 

 In England Roux's suggestive treat- 

 ise does not seem to have been 

 much noticed, and Prof. Roux 

 himself attributes this to the in- 

 adequate notice of the book by 

 Romanes in ' Nature ' (vol. xxiv. 

 p. 505), in which his doctrine 



was erroneously compared with 

 Spencer's ideas of ' ' direct equi- 

 libration." Prof. J. A. Thomson, 

 in 'The Science of Life,' refers 

 to the importance of Roux's work 

 (pp. 138, 229), and of his 'Archiv 

 fiir Entwickelungsmechanik. ' Roux 

 has been classed by some of 

 his critics among the "organi- 

 cists," a school represented in 

 France chiefly by Claude Bernard. 

 The main thesis of this view 

 seems to be that the phenomena 

 of life consist in the play of two 

 factors the organisation and the 

 environment of the living thing. 

 Roux applies the process of natural 

 selection and consequent adapta- 

 tion, which Darwin sees at work 

 in a crowd of living things, to the 

 organisation of the individuals 

 themselves, each of which is a 

 microcosm, a society of auton- 

 omous units, say of cells. He 

 has accordingly gone a step 

 farther back than the older 

 " organicists," studying the de- 

 velopment, the genesis of the 

 organism on Darwinian lines. M. 

 Delage accordingly dates from him 

 a new school of " organicism." 

 " L'orgauicisme commence, a mon 

 sens, avec Descartes (1642), se 

 continue avec Bichat, Claude 

 Bernard, et arrive avec Roux 

 (1881) a une theorie si profonde"- 

 ment modifiee, bien qu'elle derive 

 du meme principe, qu'elle peut 

 etre conside"re"e comme toute 

 nioderne" (' L'Heredite", p. 408). 



