226 The American Naturalist. [March, 
synonymous or identical meaning. Nothing is farther from the 
truth. These words have as distinctive and individual a meaning 
as any words in scientific usage, conveying totally different ideas. 
An organ is a part of a body capable of performing some es- 
pecial work, while an organism is the whole body, a unit or 
entity, which the various organs in their mutual relationship 
compose. That this is not my definition, devised for a purpose, 
the nearest scientific dictionary will confirm. Ordinarily the mis- 
use of scientific language might result from an oversight and be 
of little or no importance, but here it is not so, for Dr. Bonwill’s 
leading argument stands or falls with this definition. We will 
assume that the question which he quotes from Mr. Darwin to be 
correct: “ Demonstrate to me a complex organism that can be 
made in any other way than as I say, by slow, slight modifica- 
tions, and my argument falls to the ground.” To this query of 
Darwin's he replies: “I have duplicated by design and intelli- 
gence the most complex organ in the human body, and made it 
perform the same function as the natural organ.” The organ he 
refers to here is a set of teeth. There is no evidence here but of 
entire satisfaction that when he has made a set of teeth, or a 
“complex organ ” as he calls it, he has met the demand of Dar- 
win for a “complex organism.” If the words “organ” and 
“organism” are not identical in meaning to Dr. Bonwill’s mind, 
why does he upon the same page as the above use such language 
as this: “I claim to have made a demonstration of the con- 
struction of a complex organism—the human teeth—according 
to these laws; a demonstration which accounts for all the 
functions of the natural organism.” “I claim that if I am able to 
form such a complex organism by a single act of creation, I must 
be greater than nature, or must have anticipated her by millions 
of years.” “Iclaim that this organism could not have been 
made from that in any other existing type of animal or combina- 
tion of animals.” Dr. Bonwill promises to put in book form 
these arguments. It will be well, before he fulfils this promise, 
that he should learn that a complex organism is something more 
than an artificial set of teeth. 


