Herbst 249 



One notes that these theories of Herbst and His and 

 other similar ones imply an extraordinary independence 

 and autonomy even during ontogeny not only in each part 

 of the organism but even in each cell. The development 

 of each particle, even the most minute, would thus depend 

 fundamentally upon the independence of its response to 

 the action of its immediate or close environment, even 

 though this response is given in a very definite manner 

 and is in no wise arbitrary. But this is hard to reconcile 

 with the mutual adaptedness which there must necessarily 

 be between the different parts constituting a single co- 

 ordinated whole. And it is still more irreconcilable with 

 the constancy and precision with which even the most 

 minute peculiarities of the organism are reproduced in 

 each development, even when the conditions of the en- 

 vironment in which it takes place do not always remain 

 alike in respect to nutrition, temperature or other factors. 



And so much the more, since the principle of fructify- 

 ing causality, employed to explain this constancy and 

 rigorous precision with which the same series of onto- 

 genetic phenomena is always repeated, is a sword with 

 two edges. For, admitting that only a single one of the 

 numberless intermediate links of the chain should find 

 itself in a somewhat different condition in relation to its 

 environment, or should differ in any way even though 

 inconsiderably from the corresponding link of the preced- 

 ing generation, a thing which one might well assert occurs 

 in every ontogeny, then the remaining portions of the 

 chain would find themselves, because of the modifications 

 accumulating and multiplying like an avalanche, altered 

 throughout, and therefore in the last links also. The 

 mutual adaptedness of numberless different parts and 

 their co-ordination into a single harmonious whole, and 



