OBJECT AND LIVING ORGANISM 123 



But fortunately, Nature, when she created the unicellular 

 animals, such as amoebae and infusorians, which consist, 

 entirely or in main part, of protoplasm, has vouchsafed us a 

 glimpse into its super-mechanical powers. Study of amoebae 

 has taught us two things — first, that in order to carry out a 

 mechanical action, a mechanical apparatus must be present : 

 and second, that protoplasm has the power to go on creating 

 the mechanical apparatus anew and to break it up 

 again. 



Study of infusorians has shown that these creatures, 

 whose animal activity is carried out by permanent apparatus, 

 still depend for their vegetative apparatus on pure proto- 

 plasmic activity. Their interior still consists of fluid proto- 

 plasm, and this forms around each particle of ingested food a 

 vacuole, which first becomes the mouth, then the stomach, 

 then the intestine, and finally the anus. 



In this case we see that the impulse-sequence of the 

 functions is present before the organs exercising the functions 

 are in any way formed, and that the protoplasm has the power 

 of shaping organs in correspondence with this impulse- 

 sequence. 



We see the organs appear one after the other in definite 

 sequence ; and each, when its work is finished, disappears 

 again. In animals with a fixed framework the organs are per- 

 manently present, and in place of the sequence in time there 

 is an anatomical connection. 



There is, then, a non-material order which first gives \J 

 to matter its framework — a rule of life. This rule appears 

 only when it is creating the framework ; and this it forms on 

 strictly individual lines, corresponding to the material pro- 

 perties of the protoplasmic animal concerned. 



It is like a melody, which controls the sequence of sound 

 and the rhythm in accordance with law, but becomes apparent 

 only as it becomes operative, and then takes on the tone- 



