THE GEKM-PLASM THEORY 



But organisms also are machines which perform a particular i 

 purposeful kind of work, and they are only capable of doing 

 because the energies which perform the work are Forced into defii 

 paths by superior forces; these superior Forces are thus ■ the steersmen 

 of the energies.' There is undoubtedlya kernel of truth in this \ 

 and I shall return to it. Reinke, however, uses it in a way which 

 I cannot follow; that is, he infers From it a 'cosmic intelligen 

 which puts these superior forces into the organisms, and thus conti 

 these machines to purposeful work, as the watchmaker putfi 'supei 

 forces' into the watch by means of wheels, cylinders, and Levi I 



one case it is human intelligence which controls the ' superior F< 

 in the other 'cosmic' intelligence. I cannot regard this reason] 

 from analogy as convincing, because, in the first place, these supei 

 forces' are not 'forces' at all. They arc constellations of enei 

 co-ordinations of matter and the energies immanent therein under 

 complex and precisely defined conditions, and it is a matter 

 indifference whether chance or human intelligence has brought them 

 together. If we take Reinke's own example of carbohydrates it Lh 

 certain that our coal-gas is due to the intelligence of man. which 

 brings together the carbon and the water in such a way that coal _ 

 must arise. The 'superior forces' must here be looked For in the 

 arrangements of the coke-stove, and, in the second place, in the 

 intelligence of man. But when decaying plants in the marsh Form 

 another carbon-compound, marsh-gas, where do the directing - superioi 

 forces' come in 1 ? Surely only in the fortuitous concomitance of the 

 necessary materials and the necessary conditions. Or may amic 



intelligence have established this laboratory in the marsh .' [f not, 

 what can compel us to refer the formation of dextrin or starch in the 

 cells of the green leaves of plants to 'superior Forces which are pla 

 in them by 'cosmic' intelligence? I am Far From believing that the 

 great and deep problem here touched upon can be put aside in any 

 off-hand manner, but I feel sure that it will never be solved by word- 

 play about energies and ' superior forces.' 



* Let us return to the kernel of truth in Reinke's thesis : it lies in 

 this, that, while the working of a machine does really depend on the 

 forces or energies which are bound up with the stuffs of whid 

 consists, it also depends on a particular combination of these stuffs 

 and forces, on a particular < constellation ' of them, as Fechn< 

 pressed it. In the watch these 'constellations- are the springs, the 

 wheels, &c, and their position in relation to each other; but in the 

 organism they are the organs, down to the cells and cell-part 

 the cell too is a machine, indeed a very complex one, as its Function 



