M ON ERA, AND THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 683 



without intermission to expand and to contract ; alternately to suffer 

 decomposition and to accomplish its recomposition. A blank sameness, 

 an almost thought-paralyzing monotony of life, is thus exhibited by 

 many of these primitive beings. Only always expansion and contrac- 

 tion, by means of that same kind of reintegration and disintegration. 

 Nothing more, apparently. It would almost seem as if the anti-evolu- 

 tionists were right after all in their main view of life. It, indeed, resem- 

 bles most strikingly a perpetual seesaw ; the very same thing always 

 over again a mere organic toy, ingeniously contrived, so as to main- 

 tain itself intact, in spite of encroaching outside influences ; the un- 

 meaning disturbance of a most delicate equilibrium, and the following 

 exact reestablishment of that very same equilibrium. This, reduced to 

 its most simple biological expression, is the foundation of the opinions 

 which oppose evolutionism by maintaining the permanence of organic 

 species, or their archetypal origin. 



All turns upon the decision of the following point : Does there exist 

 an absolute equivalence, a total identity between the compound sepa- 

 rated from the protoplasm by the dynamical influences of the medium 

 and the restitutive compound taken up from the medium by dint of the 

 specific affinities inherent in the protoplasm ? Does there normally 

 exist a complete fixity in the observed play of equilibrated activities ? 

 Does this ever-reiterated exhibition of motility fulfill only its own mo- 

 tory object ? Or, translated into the language of volition, Does the 

 organism merely move to feed, and feed to move ? This, in truth, is the 

 pith of this momentous question. 



The chemical affinities inwoven in the protoplasm are, like all chem- 

 ical affinities, of a most definite kind. This chemical definiteness is 

 even outwardly manifest in the strict preservation of all peculiarities 

 in the different living substances which constitute the varieties of mo- 

 nera. Now, this functional restitution of protoplasm is effected entirely 

 by means of these inherent chemical affinities. It is clear, therefore, 

 that, if a deviation is ever to occur in the beats of this chemically so 

 firmly established vital pendulum, it can be operated only in two ways : 

 Either the dynamical influences succeed in splitting off from the ex- 

 panding protoplasm a slightly-differing molecule, affecting thus the 

 total chemical equilibrium in such a manner as to bring about a some- 

 what altered reintegration of the same, or the restitutive material 

 possesses, by dint of its own peculiar molecular composition, the power 

 of forcing the disintegrated substance to reintegrate itself with some 

 slight deviation. 



In other words, variations in the molecular constitution of the pro- 

 toplasm can only be effected either by the dynamical influences of the 

 medium, or by the restitutive material of the medium. Spontaneous 

 variations, starting from within the already-established molecular equi- 

 librium of the protoplasm itself, would be like all other spontaneous 

 changes, an inadmissible supposition, an effect without a cause. 



