S98 The Vnity of ihe Organism 



last charge it may be pointed out that any objective term, 

 no matter how exact and rigidly scientific, is capable of be- 

 ing given a mystical twist. Think for example, of how the 

 words substance and force had been and still are being 

 abused in this way ! Were positive science to eliminate from 

 its vocabulary all words that have had mystical meanings 

 imposed upon them, there would be left only words that 

 have never come into wide and general use. The truth as 

 touching the mystical implication of organism and organ- 

 ization is that while no careful thinker would venture to deny 

 tliat they may have been thus misused, they have suffered 

 distinctly less than many other common biological terms 

 the utility of which when properl}^ used no one ever ques- 

 tions. 



These palliative remarks about the charge of mysticism 

 are not intended to lessen in any degree the need of giving 

 greater definiteness to the concept. 



We may take as a starting point for this effort the funda- 

 mental truth that living beings exist whose organization is 

 so radically different from any with which ordinary obser- 

 vation acquaints us, as to have been wholly unpredictable 

 before they had been actually studied. Research on the 

 protista and especially those prosecuted during the present 

 era, have established their uniqueness beyond cavil, and no 

 other general result of these researches is of greater im- 

 portance than this. 



The appraisement of the fruits of protistology thus in- 

 dicated came to me gradually in the course of my studies 

 preparatory to writing the chapter on this subject, and I 

 was greatly interested to find later that Dobell had reached 

 the same conclusion. "The great importance," he writes, 

 "of the protista — to my mind — lies in the fact that they 

 are a group of living beings which are organized upon quite 

 a different principle from that of other organisms. . . . 

 The protista offer us, in other words, a new point of view 



