EDMUND MONTGOMERY-ORGANIC REPRODUCTION. 
5 
How then does he imagine the generation of new plastidules and their 
diversely specific grouping to be effected ? It is well known that Haeckel, 
though he professes the purely mechanical view of nature, is really a 
liylozoist. For he attributes to every atom entering into the composition 
of natural objects psychical properties, such as sensation and volition. 
His vital molecules, the plastidules, he endows with an additional psy¬ 
chical faculty. He ascribes to them memory of an unconscious kind, 
which implies reproduction of former experience. This reproductive 
memory he believes to be that which imparts vitality to them. By dint 
of it, his plastidules are held to possess the power of continuously repro¬ 
ducing their own specific motion, together with such modifications as are 
wrought upon it by external influences. This is believed to enable them 
not only to maintain their own highly complex identity, but moreover, 
to transmit their inherent motion to adjacent pabulum, which, coerced 
thereby into like vibrations becomes converted into new plastidules. An 
organism propagates thus its own kind merely because its ultimate vital 
molecules convert foreign material into their own likeness by transmit¬ 
ting their specific motion to it. Propagation of kind is therefore in the 
last instance propagation of specific motion. 
Growth takes place, in accordance with this view, simply by intrinsic 
accretion of newly formed plastidules. When then, by accumulation of 
more and more such plastidules, the plastide or cell has increased so much 
in bulk as to overreach the limit of its cohesive force, division occurs. 
It is obvious that the two cells resulting from the division, however 
equally endowed they may start on their separate courses, will eventually 
become exposed to different modifying influences. These influences will 
gradually change their respective plastidule motions, thus differentiating 
the constitution of the two cells. These again divide, and again dissim¬ 
ilar influences cause further deviation from the parent type. In this man¬ 
ner the diversifying operation proceeds from cell-generation to cell-gen¬ 
eration; the entire series of differentiated individuals representing at last 
a many-branched genealogical tree. 
This attempted solution of the problem of reproduction by means of 
specific efficiencies attributed to conjectural modes of motion is undeni¬ 
ably anti-mechanical, not to say anti-scientific. A spontaneous psychical 
activity is here held to produce motion. And it is assumed that in vital 
units there may occur an ever relieved creation of highly specific ener¬ 
gies out of such mere ideal or mental stuff as memory is made of. 
But let all this pass. Take everything that Perigenesis assumes for 
granted. Allow the multicellular organism to be constructed by means 
of the propagation of multifariously diverging plastidule motions im¬ 
parted to pabulum. Say we have thus actually succeeded in producing 
the complex organism. How then, it must be asked, is the re-production 
