CURRENT: LITERATURE 
BOOK REVIEWS 
The organism as a whole 
The author of book? in his previous writings has concerned himself 
with particular processes and activities of the organism, but has never given 
us any adequate ERE of that remarkable order and harmony which 
make the organism a whole and not merely an aggregate of parts. The title 
of the book arouses the hope and justifies the expectation that we shall find 
in it something in the way of a synthesis or some attempt at least to formulate 
the problem of organic order and harmony in physico-chemical terms. To 
what extent the book accomplishes this will appear more clearly as we consider 
its contents. 
In the preface the author says, “‘in this book an attempt is made to show 
chromosomes can impress only individual characteristics, probably by giving 
~ to special hormones and enzymes.” Apparently this conception of the 
gg cytoplasm and chromosomes is the chief thesis of the book, for it is stated 
repeatedly i in — thes same words. By way of proof, some well known cases 
of vi tion in animal eggs are cited and their apparent 
relation | to the future embryo is pointed out, but as regards the action of the 
Mendelian factors the reviewer has not been able to find anything except 
surmises, suggestions, and opinions, and these do not carry us beyond the 
original statement. Moreover, no attempt is made to show how the unity 
of the organism results from this situation in the egg or how the situation itself 
arises. As LOEB states it, the case looks amazingly like one of pre-established 
harmony. The cytoplasmic differentiations are there and the Mendelian 
factors are there, apparently without any previous relation to each other, and 
it does not appear how they have come to be there. It is difficult to discover 
where the unity lies. 
The second thesis of the book seems to be that the existence of purposeful 
and harmonious organisms is explicable in mechanistic terms on the basis of 
evolutionary theory, provided we substitute the De Vriesian for the Darwinian 
conception. In support of this thesis the stock arguments are presented: 
(x) that mutations are inherited, while fluctuating variations are not; and 
* Logs, Jacques, The organism as a hho from a physico-chemical viewpoint. 
pp. viii+379. New York: Putnam Sons. 19 
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