While dealing with our harmonious-equipotential systems as the
starting-points of processes of restitution, *e.g.* in *Tubularia*,
*Clavellina*, the flatworms, and other instances, we always have
regarded cross-sections of the body as constituting the elements of
equipotentiality. Now cross-sections, of course, are by no means simple
in themselves, but are made up of very different tissues, which are
derivates of all three of the original germ layers--ectoderm, mesoderm,
and endoderm. Owing to this composite character of the cross-sections,
taken as elements of harmonious systems, a special phenomenon of
morphogenesis is presented to us, which teaches somewhat more than the
mere concept of harmonious-equipotentiality can express. If composite
elements concerned in morphogenesis result in one whole organisation
in spite of the development of the single tissues of these elements
going on independently, then there must be a sort of correspondence
or reciprocity of the harmonious development among these tissue
constituents themselves; otherwise a proportionate form could not be the
final result. We may conveniently speak of a *reciprocity of harmony* as
existing between the single tissues or germ layers which constitute many
harmonious-equipotential systems, and there can be little doubt that we
have here an important feature with regard to general morphogenesis.[68]
[68] Reciprocal harmony may be reduced in some cases to the given
proportions of one original harmonious system, from which the single
constituents of the complicated system, showing reciprocal harmony, are
derived. Then we have only an instance of “harmony of constellation”
(see p. 109). But reciprocal harmony seems to become a problem itself,
if it occurs in restitutions starting from quite a typical point,
selected by the experimenter. It will be a problem of future research
to give an exact formula of what happens here. Reciprocal harmony also
occurs in regeneration proper. It is known that the formation of the
regenerative bud and the differentiation of this bud follow each other.
As the bud is composed of different elementary systems, it follows that
these different systems, of which every single one is harmonious, also
have to work in reciprocity to each other, in order that one whole
proportionate formation may result.
A few other groups of morphogenetic facts may find their proper place
here, though they are not properly to be regarded as additions to the
theory of harmonious systems but as forming a sort of appendix to it.
THE “MORPHAESTHESIA” OF NOLL[69]
[69] *Biol. Centralblatt.* 23, 1903.
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