196 
needful, hold in abeyance for a season all the ordinary forces 
with which we are acquainted. Wherever there is an organism 
there must be an organizer , and this working apparently 
according to a predestined design, capable of carrying out this 
design within certain limits of oscillation, able to sustain the 
structure to which it is attached or with which it is united, and 
to repair damages to a certain extent, varying according to the 
complexity of the structure ; so that the starfish that has lost a 
ray does not produce a crab’s claw in its place ; nor does the 
lobster, in place of its lost claw, by any chance assume a human 
hand. In the very least organized creature — and they have 
been measured not larger than the thousandth part of a milli- 
metre (-003937th of an inch)-— the special organizer must have 
under its absolute control as many atoms of matter, it may be, 
as London contains of inhabitants ; yet, while it holds sway, 
not one of these starts on an independent line. As soon as the 
creature dies , all this is reversed, and the chemical affinities 
resume their sway. The organizer is capable of assuming 
suitable matter to complete its organism, and this to any 
extent required, and also to provide for the continuance of this 
assimilation ; so that every creature that we know of tends to 
an excessive reproduction ; and the world would become too full 
if it were not that each creature (as it seems) has its special 
destroyer or destroyers. It is admirable with what apparent 
foresight and forecast this principle which we vaguely call nature 
works within ourselves, all unconsciously to ourselves ; for if a 
bone is broken (for instance), the processes that are immediately 
set up to repair the mischief would certainly not be improved 
upon by consultation of the whole College of Surgeons. Yet 
what is it that practically adapts all this provident knowledge to 
our healing ? Is it some “ molecular machinery in our imagina- 
tions,” or, as explained according to a great authority, “ the 
poles of the atoms are arranged that tendency is given to their 
powers, so that, when the poles and powers have free action and 
proper stimulus in a suitable environment, they (the powers ? or 
the poles ?) determine first the germ and afterwards the complete 
organism ?”* 
83. How much we are indebted to “ the powers ” and “ the 
sur l’Accroissement vegetal et la Greffe, Ann. des Sciences Nat. Bot ., 
t. xiv. p. 30. . . 
“ Les jeunes tissus v4g4taux, ceux de la couche generatrice en particulier, 
ont la propri6t6 de se modifier, de se metamorphoser, pour produire tel ou tel 
' or^ane dans telle ou telle situation, suivant les besoins de la planted — Tr4cul, 
Ann. des Sciences Naturelles, t. xvii. p. 276. 
* Dr. Tyndall, quoted in Life Theories , p. 27. 
