28 The Unity of the Organism 



that hack of the organization of the cytoplasm is the or- 

 ganization of the chromosomes, which is definite, determinate 

 and primary." ^^ (Itahcs mine). 



There you have it again ! Although it is freely granted 

 that you can see the cytoplasm in the very act of arising 

 epigenetically and moving about to become definitely located, 

 that is, to become organized, still what you see is no part of 

 the real essence of the business. "Back" of this, in the 

 chromosomes, which, be it specially noticed, can not be seen 

 to take any active part in the operations, we must conceive 

 is the "organization" which is "definite, determinate and 

 primary'' — in other words which is The Ultimate Cause, so 

 far as heredity is concerned. Again I repeat, wearisome 

 as the iteration has become, that the fallacy in this sort 

 of reasoning is not in holding that there is some causal 

 power "back" of the phenomena to be explained, but that 

 all such power is located there. Tliat is, stating the general 

 point in its application to the special case, the fallacy lies 

 not in holding that the chromosomes contribute something 

 to the hereditary attributes of the ascidians and other ani- 

 mal groups whose development Conklin investigated, but in 

 the implied denial that the cytoplasm contributes anything 

 to it. 



Conklin probably would not admit that there is real 

 contradiction between the observations by liimself and oth- 

 ers, on the part played by cytoplasm in the early stages of 

 development, and his contention that the evidence now "prac- 

 tically amounts to a demonstration" of the correctness of 

 the theory that the "chromosomes are the seat of the in- 

 heritance material." What he would probably contend is 

 that the observations are opposed merely to the extreme 

 form of the chromosome theory. Thus, speaking from an 

 angle of the general subject a little different from that of 

 cytoplasmic localization, he writes : "This conclusion is not 

 a refutation of the nuclear inheritance theory, but it is a 



