Page:Philosophical Review Volume 30.djvu/638

622 and combined in various ways, giving in each case individuals diverse in 'causal power,' so that out of the same two sets of materials many individuals, diverse in their characteristics and behavior, may be formed; the dependence of the characteristics and behavior of the individual on the distribution and combination of these substances has been demonstrated in hundreds of different ways. These distributions and recombinations have been found to follow the rules of permutations and combinations commonly denominated chance: they constitute the rules of inheritance discovered in the last few years. When from the same pair of parents are produced progeny, some with red eyes, some with white, shall we say that the diverse colors are due to the different individualities of the two sets, or to the fact that one has received the chemicals ('genes') required for producing the red color, while the other has not? The same question arises when part of the progeny fly toward the light, while the other do not; the distribution and number in each case following the general rules of inheritance of the 'genes,' I am inclined to believe that in practice science will continue to remain elementalist to the extent of preferring the latter method of accounting for the facts. This will not imply any denial of the existence of the unified organism (as it appears to me in spite of Ritter's criticisms on this point that most present practice does not). It means simply that the organism as cause is not ultimate, but like other conditions, has other causes back of it, and that discovery of these gives more insight than the statement that the organism-as-a-whole is the cause of what happens. It is further certainly not true that the organism is supreme or ultimate in the sense that it causes all to occur in the interest of organic unity. The parts often operate in such a way as to prevent or destroy the existence of a unified individual: devastatingly disordered growth occurs in cancer; the organism frequently takes into itself substances that are incompatible with its unified action or even with its existence; it gradually admits such changes in its substance that it must die. In that sorting over and recombination of the numerous diverse chemicals at reproduction, to which we have before alluded, combination of components frequently occur that cannot produce normal and unified individuals; monstrosities and all sorts of non-viable individuals occur: plants without chlorophyll, condemned to death as soon as the parental food is exhausted; individuals that cannot produce legs, or wings, or eyes, or still more essential parts, so that they cannot make more than the beginning of