THE GENESIS OF LIVING ORGANISMS 209 



The liberation of the ferments is referable to an impulse 

 of the subject. 



There will always be scientific men who try to make an 

 invisible framework responsible for these processes, so as to 

 get away from the uncongenial notion of the subject with 

 its impulses. 



And our reply to them must be that a framework without 

 an autonomous function-rule can work only like a machine, 

 and is never able to repair itself. How could the repair take 

 place if the rule governing that were lost through the breaking 

 up of the structure ? 



In the subject, however, the rule remains alive, i.e. in- 

 dependent of the destruction of the framework which it has 

 itself created. 



It would embarrass the biological point of view most un- 

 justifiably to assume that, while the genesis of properties pro- 

 ceeds automatically, their repair does not. Both phenomena 

 take place according to law, but not automatically, by an 

 ordered sequence of impulses from the subject, which itself 

 is nothing more or less than " a law of incarnation." 



If we assume that the properties of the pseudopodia arise 

 through the release of certain genes, we may conclude that 

 the vanishing of the pseudopodia and the disappearance of 

 their properties is the effect of certain " anti-genes," which 

 likewise are under the control of the impulses of the subject. 



The activity of the subject, consisting in the regulated 

 giving off of impulses, that and the presence of genes and 

 anti-genes, are quite sufficient to explain the appearance and 

 disappearance of the vegetative organs in the Infusoria. 



The interlocking of function-rule and rule of genesis in 

 unicellulars can best be understood if we realise that all the 

 rule of genesis has to perform in this case is to close the func- 

 tion-circle every time by creating the transient pseudopodia 

 afresh as occasion requires. It lies therefore completely under 



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