16 
Transactions Texas Academy of Science. 
stitutes the ^essential ground and real object of the contention, I mean 
the problem of the living Form” 
It is, indeed, as Albrecht suggests, the problem of the evolution of 
the unitary living form, with all its structural differentiations that above 
all other questions can not be mechanically solved. The definite struc- 
tural formation of an organism, even from a mere fragment of egg-plasm, 
and in every c.ase with strictly specific localization of its sundry con- 
stituent parts or organs ; this wonderful vital fact is what upset Driesch’s 
confidence in mere mechanical modes of actuation, and drove him into 
the Neovitalistic camp. Many vain attempts are made to refute his irre- 
futable conclusion. Johannes Reinke, for instance, believes that re- 
course to vitalistic assumptions is uncalled for. Yet his own “Domen- 
enton” theory, which he takes to be purely mechanistic, involves a vital- 
istic assumption surpassing all that Neovitalism claims. He rightly as- 
cribes to the structure of the organism a force or influence directing the 
specific outcome of its vital manifestations. He holds, however, the or- 
ganic mechanism to be the embodiment of an unconscious psychical 
activity, akin to instinct, which must then be the real agency dominating 
the direction of the working energies of the organic machine. This as- 
sumption of a psychical agency directing psychical movement or mechan- 
ical effects is evidently Vitalism of the ancient kind, and as such emi- 
nently hypermechanical. The relation of psychical influences to mechan- 
ical movements is, however, an epistemological and hardly a biological 
question, unless biology be defined as including also psychical manifesta- 
tions. 
It is an essential characteristic of Neo vitalism to refrain from having 
recourse to other agencies than those belonging to the organism itself. 
Neovitalism is, however, for all that, well aware that the most funda- 
mental of all questions is that of the true relation of psychical to phys- 
ical phenomena. And it is aware also that vital phenomena are only 
symbolically revealed to our consciousness, principally through our organ 
of vision. 
But, regardless of such transcendental considerations, it certainly re- 
mains mechanically inexplicable how a mere fragment of egg-plasm, 
taken from whatever part of it, can have power to regenerate the com- 
plex specific form and structure of the embryo. By force of this fact 
alone Neo vitalism is justified. 
Perhaps I may now be allowed to state, that my own protoplasmic re- 
searches, the principal results of which were published twenty-five years 
ago, led me positively and clearly to recognize the unity of the organic 
individual, together with its ontogenetic reproduction or regeneration 
from fragments of its substance ; and also most emphatically the necessity 
