74 The Unity of the Organism 



way through being subject to the metabolic processes com- 

 mon to the whole organism. Undoubtedly the germ-plasm 

 dogma itself has tended strongly to divert attention from 

 this aspect of the problem of germinal material — indeed, 

 has tended to minimize the importance of the metabolism 

 of such material even if it has not tended to deny that the 

 material is subject to this process. 



So important is it from the organismal standpoint to 

 conceive the material basis of heredity as part and parcel 

 of the organism generally, especially as regards the basal 

 growth and sustentative processes, that we must examine in 

 some fullness the evidence favorable to such a conception. 

 In its most brazenly evidence-ignoring form, the gerai-plasm 

 dogma asserts that the female parent does not really pro- 

 duce the eggs or the male parent the sperm, as they seem 

 to, but that these are produced by previous germs ad in- 

 finitum. There are, to be sure, quite a number of observ- 

 able facts, as those of the early formation of germ-cells 

 in several animals, that can be forced into a seeming sup- 

 port of such a conception. But the familiar and all but uni- 

 versal fact that multicellular organisms, plants and animals 

 alike, are sexually immature for a shorter or longer part of 

 their lives, the very essence of the immaturity being the un- 

 developed state of the reproductive system, would be a 

 sufficient refutation of the view for any mind not made 

 impervious to facts by long and faithful sophistication. 



Germ-Cells Subject to Metabolism Like All Other Cells 



The biological commonplace that all germ-cells, like all 

 other cells, undergo a process of growing and maturing 

 before they can perform their distinctive office, and that 

 this process depends upon the retention of the germs by the 

 parent organism, ought, as already indicated, to be a suf- 

 ficient antidote againjst the germinal continuity fallacy, 



