Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/223

 ticular example of the favourable environment shielding the organism. The relation of part to whole has the special reciprocity associated with the notion of organism, in which the part is for the whole; but this relation reigns throughout nature and does not start with the special case of the higher organisms.

Further, viewing the question as a matter of chemistry, there is no need to construe the actions of each molecule in a living body by its exclusive particular reference to the pattern of the complete living organism. It is true that each molecule is affected by the aspect of this pattern as mirrored in it, so as to be otherwise than what it would have been if placed elsewhere. In the same way, under some circumstances an electron may be a sphere, and under other circumstances an egg-shaped volume. The mode of approach to the problem, so far as science is concerned, is merely to ask if molecules exhibit in living bodies properties which are not to be observed amid inorganic surroundings. In the same way, in a magnetic field soft iron exhibits magnetic properties which are in abeyance elsewhere. The prompt self-preservative actions of living bodies, and our experience of the physical actions of our bodies following the determinations of will, suggest the modification of molecules in the body as the result of the total pattern. It seems possible that there may be physical laws expressing the modification of the ultimate basic organisms when they form part of higher organisms with adequate compactness of pattern. It would, however, be entirely in consonance with the empirically observed action of environments, if the direct effects of aspects as between the whole body and its parts were negligible.