88 The Unity of the Organism 



as in the shifting from deteYmma7its to determiners, or from 

 determiners to ge7is, or from gens to factors, involves a 

 rejection of the conception that the germinal elements of 

 organisms, after being discharged are literally detached 

 parts of those organisms. This conception was well on the 

 road to incorporation into the great body of established 

 biological truth when it was headed ofF by Weismann's 

 diametrically opposed hypothesis of germinal isolation. 



I would insist that the defense of the organismal concep- 

 tion in this volume is really a carrying out of such a con- 

 ception of the organism and its germinal products as is 

 implied by the old view that the germ is a part of the parent 

 organism. It would hardly be possible to express more sat- 

 isfactorily in a single sentence the most inclusive theo- 

 rem, as it might be called, the demonstration of which is the 

 aim of the part of this volume devoted to the means by which 

 organisms propagate their kind, than the following from 

 E. B. Wilson: "To the modern student the germ is, in 

 Huxley's words, simply a detached living portion of the 

 substance of a preexisting living body carrying with it a 

 definite structural organization characteristic of the 

 species." ^ 



Coupling this statement by Wilson with another from 

 one of his latest writings,^ to the effect that we ought to 

 drop the term determiner because in reality what it means 

 is differential, I call attention to the fact that the "dif- 

 ferential factor" of the later statement and the "definite 

 structural organization characteristic of the species" of 

 the earlier statement are in essence one and the same. The 

 only difference is that in the earlier statement it is the 

 whole germ-cell that is recognized to be a detached part of 

 the organism, while the later statement can be brought 

 down to the chromosomes because of the greater refinement 

 of knowledge attained since the earlier one was made. The 

 point I wish to make stand forth with the greatest possible 



