6 THE ORIGIN OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 
magnitude from the protoplasmic pattern, and there- 
fore involves integrating and ordering factors which 
must be different, at least in degree, from those con- 
cerned in protoplasmic integration. 
Manifestly an adequate conception of the nature of 
organismic integration and pattern is essential to the 
progress of biology, because all except the most super- 
ficial knowledge of the organism as a whole must be 
based upon such a conception. Without it the data of 
biological research have a significance in relation to the 
living organism somewhat like that of the house- 
wrecker's stock in trade to the house. 
THE ORIGIN OF ORGANISMIC PATTERN 
In order to find a point of departure for further 
attack on the problem it is necessary to consider first 
whether organismic pattern is inherent in protoplasm or 
imposed upon it from without. In other words, does 
organismic pattern develop, so to speak, spontaneously 
out of protoplasm or the cell, or is it in some sense a 
response to environmental factors ? 
Any extended historical consideration of the problem 
of the origin of pattern or integration in organisms is 
impossible at this time, but it may be pointed out that 
the preformists, and notably among them Weismann, 
have simply assumed as inherent in protoplasm such 
integration and pattern as seemed to be necessary and 
have described it in terms of hypothetical entities of 
some sort. Essentially the same point of view persists 
among those who postulate a definite, persistent mor- 
phological pattern in the chromosome (Morgan, 1919, 
chap. xix). Preformistic theory offers us nothing but 
