Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/185

Rh that same criterion you must apply to all other natural objects, no matter whether some of these be constituents of others, or stand in some other relation to one another.

Making the statement specific for the case of objects that are composed of other objects or substances, it runs thus: Whatever criterion of reality you apply as the test of the elements of a complex body or substance, exactly that same criterion you must apply as a test of the reality of the complex body itself.

It follows from this, that with the question of a fundamental essence or substance behind properties, we are, as students of objective nature, in no wise concerned. As to whether there is or is not a real essence of sodium, or of salt, to which the sensible properties of these substances adhere, is no affair of ours. Physical science can not even raise the question of an absolute reality or realities behind the objects with which it deals.

Now let us carry these considerations of the nature of objects and of minds, and the relation existing between them, up into trre realm of objects that we call living. The formulary will run thus: In whatever sense you predicate reality, or fundamentality, or ultimateness to the germ or any part of an organism, in exactly the same sense you must predicate reality, or fundamentality, or ultimateness to the completed and whole organism.

If you have been accustomed to look upon living nature with the conception that somewhere deeply hidden in the plants and animals you daily meet there is something more real than the organisms themselves, something possessed of a potency wholly unique and mysterious as contrasted with that possessed by the visible beings; or, if you have regarded living beings as ejects of your own consciousness—if, I say, you have been wont to thus regard organisms, grasp fully this conception of reality and of measuring reality and you will find, I believe, that it will transform your world. It will increase your interest in every developed organism as contrasted with your interest in its germ, or any portion of the organism physical or psychical in almost direct proportion as the sensible complexity of the organism as a whole exceeds the sensible complexity of the germ or any part of the organism.

Here is the epistemological necessity for the conception of an "organism as a whole," the biological compulsion of which we speak later. The point is simply this: Every object in nature has some nature of its own. That is just what makes it belong to nature. Consequently there must be something about it which can not be fully accounted for by referring it to something else in nature. For if you could thus dispose of every natural object, nature would consume itself in explanation. You would have the case of the Kilkenny