122 THE STORY OF THE LIVING MACHINE. 



tions owing to the bringing of its parts into new 

 relations ? To answer these questions experimen- 

 ters have been engaged in dividing developing 

 eggs into pieces to determine what powers are still 

 possessed by the fragments. The results of such 

 experiments are as yet rather conflicting, but it 

 is evident enough from them that we can no longer 

 look upon the egg cell as a simple undifferentiated 

 cell. In some way it already contains the charac- 

 ters of the adult, and when we remember that the 

 characters of the adult which are to be developed 

 from the egg are already determined, even to many 

 minute details such, for instance, as the inherit- 

 ance of a congenital mark it becomes evident 

 that the egg is a body of extraordinary complexity. 

 And yet the egg is nothing more than a single cell 

 agreeing with other cells in all its general charac- 

 ters. It is clear, then, that we must look upon or- 

 ganization as something superior to cells and some- 

 thing existing within them, or at least within the 

 egg cell, and controlling its development. We are 

 forced to believe, further, that there may be as im- 

 portant differences between two cells as there are 

 between two adult animals or plants. In some way 

 there must be concealed within the two cells which 

 constitute the egg of the starfish and the man dif- 

 ferences which correspond to the differences be- 

 tween the starfish and the man. Organization, in 

 other words, is superior to cell structure, and the 

 cell itself is an organization of smaller units. 



As the result of these various considerations 

 there has been, in recent years, something of a re- 

 action against the cell doctrine as formerly held. 

 While the study of cells is still regarded as the 

 key to the interpretation of life phenomena, biol- 

 ogists are seeing more and more clearly that they 



