402 THE EVOLUTION THEORY 



— no matter where they had been placed at first — be incapable of 

 performing all that Delage ascribes to them. Either the germ con- 

 tains ' living ' primary constituents, or it is, as Delage maintains, 

 determined chemico-physically ; but in the latter case there is no 

 scope for hereditary local variation. Delage must either renounce 

 the attempt to explain this, or he must transform his ' substances 

 chimiques ' into real and actually living determinants. 



Thus from all sides we are forced to the conclusion that the 

 germ-substance on the whole owes its marvellous power of develop- 

 ment not only to its chemico-physical constitution, whether that be 

 eminently simple or marvellously complex, but to the fact that it 

 consists of many and different kinds of ' primary constituents ' 

 (Aalagen). that is, of groups of vital units equipped with the forces of 

 life, and capable of interposing actively and in a specific manner, but 

 also capable of remaining latent in a passive state, until they are 

 affected by a liberating stimulus, and on this account able to interpose 

 successively in development. The germ-cell cannot be merely a simple 

 organism, it must be a fabric made up of many different organisms or 

 units, a microcosm. 



Yet another train of thought leads us to the same idea, and this 

 has its roots in the extraordinary complexity of the machine which 

 we call the organism. 



The botanist Reinke has recently called attention once again to 

 the fact that machines cannot be directly made up of primary 

 physico-chemical forces or energies, but that, as Lotze said, forces of 

 a superior order are indispensable, which so dispose the fundamental 

 chemico-physical forces that they must act in the way aimed at by the 

 purpose of the machine. To produce a watch it is not enough to bring- 

 together brass, steel, gold, and stones ; to produce a piano it is not enough 

 to lay wood, iron, leather, ivory, steel, &c, side by side, but these stuffs 

 must be brought together in a definite form and combination. In the 

 same way, the mere juxtaposition of carbon and water does not result 

 in a carbohydrate like sugar or illuminating gas ; the component 

 elements only yield what is desired when they are placed in a particular 

 and absolutely definite relation to each other, in which they so act 

 upon and with one another that sugar or illuminating gas results, and 

 the same is true of the component elements of a watch or of a piano. 

 In the watch and in the piano this relation is arranged by human 

 intelligence, by the workmen avIio form the different materials and 

 put them together in the proper manner. In this case, then, human 

 intelligence is, as Reinke says, the ' superior force ' which compels the 

 energies to work together in a particular way. 



