Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm. 39 



cylindric or conic pscudopodia, consisting mostly of granular material. 

 All these diflferenees of form and consistency, and many more, are due 

 to differences in the chemical constitution of the living substance. 



Like form and function depend on like chemical constitution; unlike 

 form and function on unlike chemical constitution of the protoplasmic 

 individuals. But in all kinds of amoeboid beings functional disintegra- 

 tion and reintegration of their substance underlies their vital motility; 

 and, indeed, their entire vital activity. Without functional disintegra- 

 tion protoplasm would not be a living substance, but just as little would 

 it be a living substance without functional reintegration. It is to this 

 two-fold, seemingly antagonistic, yet really compensative activity that it 

 owes its vitality, by which it is so strikingly distinguished from lifeless 

 matter. 



The living substance is, then, quite essentially a substance which has 

 the power to reintegrate itself after suffering deterioration. Its normal 

 function consists, in fact, in the harmonized play of disintegration and 

 reintegration; definite reintegrating pulses responding to definite dis- 

 integrating pulses. All ectodermic interactions with the medium take 

 place under such functional pulsations. Vital function consists in spe- 

 cific reactive responses of the living substance to definite incitements 

 emanating from its environment. 



What has been positively ascertained regarding the agencies that 

 actuate vital motility, reveals, then, unmistakably, that a protoplasmic 

 being is a unitary individual or organism, whose entire living substance 

 is formed and maintained by a cycle of out and out interdependent chem- 

 ical activities. Disintegrating changes of its exposed surface involve 

 reintegration, not only of the surface substance, but necessarily also in 

 consequence of it, reintegration of the entire substance forming the 

 unitary individual. The protoplasmic individual is, in fact, a chemical 

 whole, all of whose constituent parts and elements form integrant, and 

 nowise mere aggregated components. The identity of the whole, the 

 identity of the entire protoplasmiclndividual, indispensable to its exist- 

 ence as a unitary being, can be maintained only by its complete rein- 

 tegration following whatever deterioration it may suffer, normal or ab- 

 normal, functional or otherwise. 



The intrinsic power of the proto])lasmic individual to restore its 

 identity as a whole when externally encroached upon is, as already stated, 

 the most fundamental formative influence in the life of organic beings. 

 The living substance, by its signal power of maintaining its identity, 

 under change; its power of identically reshaping its organization when 

 impaired ; by this power of reintegrating itself to full identity it be- 

 comes the natural and naturalistic substance par excellence, the real 

 prototype of what in philosophical conception is regarded as the essence 

 and nature of that which constitutes substantiality. For it alone in our 

 world renders possible that a body may undergo changes, displaying 

 sundry modifications, properties, attributes, and whatever modes of 



