142 The Unity of the Organism 



than he could be but for his recognition of their high service 

 against all the traditional forms of supernaturalism. The 

 real case against the school is, as I see it, two-fold. First, in 

 their zeal to substitute naturalism for supernaturalism they 

 fail to notice that supernaturalism is in its very essence 

 finalistic, and they are led to imagine they have attained, 

 or can attain, natural explanations that fully supplant the 

 old supernatural explanations. This results in the con- 

 version of their supposed naturalism into something which 

 is essentially another kind of supernaturalism. The second 

 part of the case against the school is its abuse of the most 

 common principles of the knowledge-getting processes in ob- 

 jective biology. For the general good of the biological 

 sciences the urgent need of reformation touching both as- 

 pects of the case has led me to examine the particular in- 

 stance of Loeb's treatment of internal secretions at greater 

 length than would otherwise be justifiable. 



Critique of the View That Internal Secretions are ^^Formative 



Stuffs" 



Although Loeb is the only author, so far as I know, who 

 has expressly contended for the identity of internal secre- 

 tions with Sachs' organ-forming substances, the assumption 

 is so accordant with the spirit of elementalism, and Loeb is 

 so typical and eminent a protagonist of this philosophy, 

 that his proposal will probably find many adherents. It is 

 consequently desirable to see what there is in the effort to 

 bring hormones into such a historical setting. 



The statement of Loeb's Aaews is contained in "The Or- 

 ganism as a Whole from a Ph3^sico-Chemical Viewpoint," 

 1916. Referring to his espousal twenty-five years ago of 

 Sachs' hypothesis to explain heteromorphosis, he writes : "At 

 that time the idea of the existence of such organ-forming 

 substances was received with some scepticism, but since then 



