64 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



No one would deny that the execution of the work 

 or organism-building is carried out by means of chemico- 

 physical forces ; but there is abundant evidence of a 

 Directivity which is wanting in inorganic structures. 

 And the questions are, What is it ? Whence is it ? It is 

 perceptible, I repeat, even in cell-building. Though 

 the process of karyokinesis may go on regularly and 

 mostly in the same way, yet it has been shown that the 

 nucleus sometimes has to overcome difficulties. It is 

 not mathematically and accurately placed in the middle 

 of the cell. It is often at one side ; so that to make a 

 cell-plate across the cell, as it divides into two daughter- 

 nuclei, they can travel across laying down the cell-plate 

 between them, till they get to the other side. Or, as an 

 alternative, the " equator " of the spindle or barrel may 

 become so inordinately extended as actually to stretch 

 from one side of the cell to the other. Here, then, is 

 Directivity displayed in the very fundamental stage of 

 tissue-making, not to add the behaviour of the curved 

 V like chromosomes, which arrange themselves in an 

 orderly way, and travel up the lines, as if they thoroughly 

 understood what is expected of them to accomplish. 

 Can all this complicated process be brought under 

 chemico-physical forces of the inorganic world ? 



One is inclined to wonder what these fifteen writers 

 would have to say about Directivity. May not the 

 suspicion be correct that their overlooking this special 

 peculiarity of living beings arises from Darwinism lying 

 behind their views ? Is it not this which thus causes 

 them to approximate Haeckel's and Biichner's ideas, 

 even if they do not go so far as to acknowledge them- 

 selves Atheists ? 



I will now return to Prof. Dolbear. He says in 

 speaking of protoplasm: "It is entirely structureless, 



