38 Nature of the Formative Stimulus 



can reach the organ by any other way and indeed by a 

 way quite the opposite of the normal as happens for 

 example in any distribution of electric or hydrodynamic 

 energy, and that consequently it amounts to the same 

 thing whether the regeneration of the tissue or of the 

 organ ablated proceeds in the same way as in ontogeny 

 or by any other way. 



And finally we must suppose that regeneration is 

 nothing else than a particular case of generation or 

 reproduction and that the nature of one is substantially 

 identical with that of the other: for, to use the words 

 of Delage "generation is only the regeneration of a 

 complete organism by a portion of greater or less size 

 attached to it or detached from it;" 14 so the causes of 

 the regeneration, for instance of a little disc of skin 

 which has been removed, must be essentially the same 

 as those which effect a complete reproduction. 



Between the two phenomena the following difference 

 will however exist : The regeneration of a little disc 

 of skin will be due, according to what we have just stated, 

 to the fact that the continuous nervous flux which flows 

 through the whole organism and particularly through 

 those parts which were contiguous with the part removed, 

 would tend to reestablish its dynamic equilibrium, dis- 

 turbed by the operation. If we accept the fundamental 

 biogenetic law in its first degree of approximation, 

 complete generation, on the contrary, would be a whole 

 series of transitions of the nervous energy circulating or 

 distributed in the developing organism, from one dynamic 

 system to the other next in order, both meanwhile being 

 in a state of equilibrium since they were already formerly 



14 Delage : L'heredite et les grands problemes de la biologic 

 generate. P. 98. 



