New Thought Archives at New Thought Library

portion of a Begonia leaf and in every fragment of a Hydra's body there exists a ready-formed model of the entire organism. * * * We have, therefore, no alternative but to say that the living particles composing one of these fragments, have an innate tendency to arrange themselves into the shape of the organism to which they belong. We must infer that a plant or animal of any species is made up of special units, in all of which there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to aggregate in the form of that species, just as in the atoms of salts, there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to crystallize in a particular way. It seems difficult to conceive that this can be so, but we see that it is so. Groups of units taken from an organism (provided they are of a certain bulk and not much differentiated into special structure) have this power of rearranging themselves and we are thus compelled to recognize the tendency to assume the specific form, as inherent in all parts of the organism."*

The passage is open to two observations. First, the induction is quite too broad for the premises. What is true of the Begonia and Hydra is not true of a large share of living things. Vet these narrow facts are taken as typical in a theory which is to cover the whole field to which they belong. Secondly, the hypothesis is in no sense a statement of the facts, but is in every part of it induced upon the facts. What are the simple facts? Are they not these? The living substance in its growth --- a growth that is variable in different species in its antecedent conditions --- does, as a whole, and in the

* Principles of Biology, vol. i., p. 180.