CHAPTER VI 



DETERMINISM IN THE FORMATION OF AN ORGANISM 

 FROM AN EGG 



I. The writer in a former book {Dynamics oj Living 

 Mattery 1906, p. i), defined living organisms as chemical 

 machines consisting chiefly of colloidal material and 

 possessing the peculiarity of preserving and reproducing 

 themselves. Some authors like Driesch, and v. Uex- 

 kull seem to find it impossible to account for the devel- 

 opment of such machines from an undifferentiated egg 

 on a purely physicochemical basis. A study of Driesch's 

 very interesting and important book' shows that he 

 assumes the eggs of certain animals, e. g., the sea urchin, 

 to consist of homogeneous material; and he concludes 

 that nature has solved, in the formation of highly differ- 

 entiated organisms from such undifferentiated material, 

 a problem which does not seem capable of a solution 

 by physicochemical agencies alone. But the supposi- 

 tion of a structureless egg is wrong, since Boveri has 



» Driesch, H., Science and Philosophy of the Organism. London, 

 1908 and 1909. 



128 



