

Introductory 5 



forward step; and finally, with the demonstration, ac- 

 complished chiefly by Max Schult/e, that one substance, 

 protoplasm, is the common basis of life in plants and ani- 

 mals, real biology was attained. This interpretation de- 

 clares that on the morphological side there was progress 

 step by step "from the organism as a whole to organs, to 

 tissues, to cells, and finally to protoplasm, the study of 

 which in- all its phases is the chief pursuit of biologists." 



This picture is undoubtedly true to a certain extent. 

 Science surely began with observations on organisms whole 

 and living, and only gradually did it take them to pieces 

 to learn their parts and so to deepen understanding. But 

 in so far as it gives the impression that the study of organic 

 beings has moved along a direct course from the organism 

 as a whole toward the ultimate elements or substances of 

 which organisms arc composed, and has become scientific 

 just in so far as and no further than it has advanced in 

 this direction, becoming genuine biology only when proto- 

 plasm is reached, it is not in accord with history or the 

 nature of scientific knowledge. The introduction of the 

 word biology into science by Treviranus and Lamarck in the 

 very first years of the nineteenth century was deliberate 

 and fully justified though it had no special reference to tis- 

 sues or cells, much less to protoplasm. But the unfaithful- 

 ness of tlie above sketch to actual history which I wish to 

 point out particularly, concerns the part, played by the 

 group of French biologists of which Cuvier is the best 

 known member. 



It would hardly be possible to miss more completely the 

 significance of these men than to conceive Cuvier as making 

 the "organs of which the organism is composed" the chief 

 subject of study "instead of the completed organism." The 

 distinctive feature about, the school was not the idea of the 

 organs as such, but as parts of the whole. The ensemble, 

 the principles of co-existence, or correlation, of subordina- 



