Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm. 67 



come of the chemical evolution; that, in fact, the structure and form of 

 organisms is the perceptible manifestation of a unitary, though mar- 

 velously complex, composition and activity, scientifically expressible in 

 terms of chemical experience. 



In the section on Vitality it has been shoAvn that the living substance, 

 out of which all organisms are formed, owes its vitality to a process of 

 alternate disintegration and reintegration, involving all essential vital 

 functions. It has been furthermore shown, that the fundamental 

 structural and functional differentiations of animal beings originate 

 through the very same cycle of chemical activities, which imparts to the 

 compound called protoplasm its vitality, and causes it to be a living sub- 

 stance. And it has long been known that minute artificial fragments 

 of so-called unicellular organisms, whose undeniably unbroken contin- 

 uity of living substance is evidently of chemical consistency ; that such 

 chemical fragments have power to reintegrate the highly complex 

 structure and form of certain Protozoa, which process we can watch in its 

 fluently coherent operation. Considering all these facts it certainly lies 

 near to conclude, without overstepping the limits of scientifically justi- 

 fied inference, that organic beings, consisting as they do of phyletically 

 elaborated living substance, and possessing whatever complexity of 

 structure and form, are likewise essentially chemical wholes, ontogenet- 

 ically reproducible from chemical fragments. 



Confronted by the results of experimental ontogeny and experimental 

 regeneration, the inference is inevitable, that the reproductive germs or 

 fragm.ents mu&t either possess as such intrinsic formative powers of 

 their own ; or that, on the contrary, they are merely the vehicle and raw 

 material of a formative power not inherent in themselves, but moulding 

 and evolving them from out a trancendent order of existence into the 

 nevertheless predetermined structure and form of the organism from 

 which they were derived. The first inference, that of inherent forma- 

 tive power, becomes scientifically intelligible when the germs or frag- 

 ments are recognized as being specific chemical fragments of a specific 

 chemical whole. Though what we call chemical composition, activity 

 and affinity are terms for efficiencies, which are only symbolically re- 

 vealed as sensorial phenomena within our individual consciousness, 

 scientific explanation consists in gaining an understanding of what is 

 thus symbolically revealed. The alternate inference, that of a trans- 

 cendent moulding and evolving power, is incommensurable with scientific 

 thought. It transfers ontogenetic and regenerative actuation to a 

 wholly hypothetical sphere of existence and efficiency, whose doings are 

 superimposed upon the visibly evolving substance, which can serve it then 

 only as inert raw-material. It is obvious that this means the assump- 

 tion of a vital force of the old metaphysical kind. 



In accordance with the views here advocated a few words concerning 

 the vexed contention of evolution versus epigenesis may not be out of 

 place. Ontogenetic evolution, the evolution of a germ into an adult 

 organism, may rightly be called evolution in the strict sense of the term. 



