108 The Vmty of the Organism 



nature of tlie subject matter with which they are occupied. 

 Descriptive zoology and botany are to become chemical in 

 part, and the chemistry of organisms is to become zoological 

 and botanical in part. Each science is to supplement, 

 and reciprocally to be supplemented by the other far more 

 essentially than has hitherto been the case. In one of its 

 aspects biochemistry will become a branch of systematic 

 zoology and botany, just as biology in one of its depart- 

 ments, is already a branch of chemistry. Although such a 

 state of things is very far from full realization, that the 

 movement is in this direction seems unmistakable. The con- 

 ception that animals and plants as producers of chemical 

 substances, and that each kind if not each individual is to 

 some extent a producer of different substances is receiving 

 new confirmation all the time. 



When we pass from the primary task of identifying and 

 describing the chemical substances produced by different 

 animals and ])lants to that of gaining an insight into the 

 methods by which these substances are produced ; when, in 

 other words, we pass from the problems of What to those 

 of How, the vast complexity and uniqueness not only of the 

 chemical operations of organisms as distinguished from 

 non-organisms, but as well the uniqueness, within limits, of 

 these operations come even more impressively into view. A 



liensiveness and of refinement in some directions of the chemist's descrip- 

 tions receives striking illustration in this very book "The Organism 

 as a Whole." Kestricting his consideration of the chemical bases of 

 s])ecies to the evidence drawn from laboratory experimentation, Loeb 

 writes: "Ford claims to have obtained proof that a gliicoside contained 

 in the jjoisonous mushroom Amanita phaJIoklfs can act as an antigen. 

 Hut aside from this one fact we know that proteins and only proteins 

 can act as antigens and are therefore the bearers of the specificity of 

 living organisms." (p. (iS). Exactly what is meant by "bearers of the 

 specificity of organisms" no one knows, but if the assertion implies, as 

 it seems to, that all such differences are due exclusively to proteins, it 

 is contrary to a vast array of indubitable facts of natural history. Dif- 

 ferential odors and flavors, for example, as dwelt upon above, are 

 certainly not all, probably not usually, proteid in nature. 



