EVOLUTION 129 



several kinds of protoplasm and occur under 

 no other circumstances. 



As we know that the materials of the egg 

 cells and of the cortex are undergoing contin- 

 ual disintegration and that the loss that they 

 thus suffer is regularly made good by the ap- 

 propriation of new material which comes di- 

 rectly or indirectly from the inorganic sur- 

 roundings, the inference is that our most 

 profound activities are of a purely materialis- 

 tic nature. And this conclusion seems to me 

 to be entirely correct. But when we think of 

 material, we are prone to regard only its inor- 

 ganic aspects and we often forget of what it 

 is capable when organized into living sub- 

 stance; in doing this we miss completely its 

 most profound characteristics. In this respect 

 the side of approach is most important. It 

 would be an interesting speculation to inquire 

 what would be our present outlook on nature 

 had science made its first fundamental discov- 

 eries in the organic instead of in the inorganic. 

 I am sure that that outlook would have been 

 different from what it is now, but I am also 

 equally sure that that difference, large as it 

 might seem to some of us at present, would 

 prove in the end to be temporary and illusory, 



