THE WORLD OF LIVING ORGANISMS 153 



organ to a higher level than mere apparatus, and endows it 

 with the peculiar property of life. 



The infallibility with which protoplasm, wherever it is 

 at work, is able to improve and repair the framework, shows 

 that its impulse-sequence corresponds to a definite rule, 

 which in this way governs the physico-chemical processes. 

 We can prove that the super-mechanical factor operative in 

 protoplasm must be a rule, bound indeed to a definite place in 

 space by the material with which it works, but in itself super- 

 spatial, since it disposes of the spatial arrangement of the 

 framxcwork. 



As we have learnt from protoplasmic animals that are as 

 yet without framework, the regulated impulse-sequence active 

 in protoplasm and creating the framework, is at the same 

 time a function-rule which compacts the separate movements 

 into an action. In order to perform this action, as, for 

 instance, in the action of digestion by Paramecium, framework 

 must be formed, which, in accordance with the function-rule, 

 comes into being and then disappears again, and which, still 

 in accordance with that same rule, kills the food, digests it, 

 and ejects the remains. 



Where a permanent framework has arisen, as in the 

 majority of living creatures, the formative activity of the 

 rule persists, and is exhibited in the super-mechanical regula- 

 tion and repair of injured parts. 



From this it follows that an organ differs from an apparatus 

 in not being the product of a function-rule, at one time active 

 and then fixed, but in remaining continually under the in- 

 fluence of such a rule. Moreover, wherever there is unused 

 protoplasm, it is capable of an impulse-sequence, which, in 

 obedience to a rule of its own, produces new framework. 



Now we can see that a difference in principle is involved, 

 when, on the one hand, the physiologist divides up the central 

 nervous system into apparatus, and on the other, the biologist 



