No. 52!)] 



ORGANIC RESPONSE 



7 



representing the laboratories and national cultures of 

 the world. This group of addresses and essays, fortu- 

 nately written chiefly within four languages, taken col- 

 lectively, constitutes a critical and evaluatory discussion 

 of the mass of fact and galaxy of theory concerning or- 

 ganic evolution, and furnishes the most complete and 

 thorough appraisal ever made of any subject in modern 

 biology. 



The moment, therefore, is one of consciousness of 

 achievement, of realization of increased powers of pene- 

 tration, and charged with desire for the exploitation of 

 the unknown, and is vibrant with the inspiration coming 

 from such a rapid march of events. With this quick- 

 ening in activity, the outcries of acrid controversies no 

 longer monopolize our attention, but it must not be sup- 

 posed that differences of opinion have vanished from 

 among us. The agreement as to the value of methods 

 of experimentation and calibration is a most gratifying 

 fact, but the harmonies of opinion as to interpretation of 

 results have not yet come to a monotone. 



On the contrary, the pressure of new and undisciplined 

 evidence lias awakened a freshened chorus of voices cry- 

 ing the virtues of special interests and extolling the suffi- 

 ciency of theories dignified by age and more or less 

 weighty with authority. Those busy with vitalism of 

 various patterns have spun a moiety of their favorite 

 fabric to mend the breaks in the fragile web made by the 

 impact of new facts. Isolation and the mechanism of 

 geographical distribution have again been elaborated to 

 account for all differentiation and what their exponents 

 are pleased to term speciation. The anticipatory forma- 

 tion of structures in a rudimentary condition with a long 

 prefunctional progress, guided by the morphological pos- 

 sibilities and actuated by internal impulses, has again 

 been offered to us, fortified by paleontological fact and 

 clever logic, in such manner as to avoid most of the serious 

 objections to orthogenesis except those of physiological 

 morphology. 



