186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



is that the more opportunity for chemical action the particles of a 

 substance have, the more they act; that is, the particles improve their 

 opportunity, so to speak. 



See again how pregnant of meaning this is for the potentialities of 

 atoms. It means that they have capacities to act that are revealed 

 only when conditions for them to act are presented. This reminds one 

 strongly of the unused energies of men that Professor James has 

 recently written about so luminously. 



The one other phase of science to which allusion will be made under 

 this head, belongs to the biological realm. It is the conception of the 

 " organism as a whole " that for a number of years has been working 

 its way into biology by sheer force of its own weight. The facts are 

 such as to compel admission even though they are wholly inexplicable 

 on the basis of current elementalist doctrines, and so are frequently 

 ignored or scouted by biologists of that school. 



An expression which, though extreme, still rightly presents the 

 idea comes from the German botanist de Bary. He said " Die Pflanze 

 bildet Zellen, nicht die Zelle bildet Pflanzen" (The plant produces 

 cells, not the cells produce the plant) . This is an over statement but 

 is true in so far as it expresses the unescapable fact that the whole 

 organism at any given moment, as well as its elements, is concerned 

 in determining what it shall be in the next succeeding moment. A 

 more exact expression of a particular phase of the idea is due to our 

 foremost American student of the cell, Professor E. B. Wilson. He 

 writes: "We- can not comprehend the form of cleavage (cell-division) 

 without reference to the end-result." 



Let us look at an instance of the working of this principle in the 

 realm of political organization, where it is more openly displayed. 

 The original thirteen colonies of our pre-national period, united into 

 a compact under what was known as the articles of confederation. A 

 corner stone of the union was that each state should keep inviolate its 

 original powers and privileges. Under the governmental fiction of 

 this compact, the Congress, it has been said, could recommend every- 

 thing but could enforce nothing. The experiment was naturally a 

 failure. After a period of " Strang und Gang " our nation with the 

 federal constitution as its basis was founded. 



Now recall some of the striking things that happened in this 

 transition time. First of all, the hitherto individual, sovereign states 

 had to give up some of both their powers and their possessions. The 

 "western lands" claimed by the states, had been one of the most 

 serious obstacles in the way of a closer union. Pirst New York, then 

 Virginia, yielded their claims to congress for certain guarantees to 

 them in return. The other states followed. Afterward the congress 

 erected new states in the territory thus acquired, and the old states 

 modified their organic laws to conform to the new conditions. Shall 



