MAN 185 



several means by which the organism seeks to achieve a 

 free and independent hfe. All the vital mechanisms 

 operate to preserve the constancy of the internal environ- 

 ment only because this environment is the last ditch of 

 defense between the Hving cells that comprise the or- 

 ganism and a hostile world. All the vital mechanisms 

 operate to preserve 'the conditions of life' through rather 

 than in the internal environment. 



This idea was weU expressed by the Belgian physi- 

 ologist, L6on Fredericq, who, in 1885, declared: 'The 

 living being is an agency of such a sort that each dis- 

 turbing influence induces by itself the calling forth of 

 compensatory activity to neutralize or repair the dis- 

 turbance. The higher in the scale of living beings, the 

 more numerous, the more perfect and the more compli- 

 cated do these regulatory agencies become. They tend 

 to free the organism completely from the unfavorable in- 

 fluences and changes occurring in the environment.' 



The heart of the problem thus hes not in the internal 

 environment but in the organism' that has created this 

 hothouse for itself; which means that the heart of the 

 problem hes basically in the structvire of protoplasm, 

 the living substance out of which all organisms are com- 

 posed. The living unit in all plants and animals is a 

 microscopic bit of protoplasm called a 'cell,' character- 

 ized by sharply limited physical dimensions and sharply 

 limited capacities for physiological reaction, by differen- 

 tiation into nucleus, cytoplasm, cell membrane, and 

 other cellular apparatus, by the capacity for cell division 

 and hence for reproduction, and by genetic continuity 

 from one generation of cells to another through the genes 

 and chromosomes. 



It is axiomatic in physiology that this protoplasmic 

 cell never acts— it only reacts; and it reacts only to re- 

 store the internal status quo: protoplasm is basically a 

 physical-chemical mechanism having the character of a 

 self -integrating, self -restoring, self-centered comfort ma- 

 chine, operating to the sole end of seH-preservation: that 



