62 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



mentally stable, mobile, highly complex molecular mixture of 

 colloid constituents called the protoplasm. This may form, 

 and have associated with it, various accessory chemical com- 

 pounds as food materials or as sources of added energy, and 

 it carries additional accessory compounds for the chemical 

 alteration or metabolism of the food materials. 



But it should not be forgot that all of this molecular com- 

 plexity fundamentally represents rotatory motion of ether 

 particles, in which the varying degrees of rapidity of motion, 

 the amount of vibratory or constitutive energy, the lines of 

 flow of that energy, and the areas of the fields of energy that 

 the particles or the groups of particles possess have determined 

 the exact morphological complexity, size, relation, and resist- 

 ance capacity of the constituents that make up the whole. 

 So, whatever changes occur in one or more constituents of that 

 whole, these are to be explained in terms of some alteration in 

 the energizing currents. This may seem an extremely fugitive 

 and unstable foundation on which the whole superstructure of 

 plant and animal morphology and physiology has been reared. 

 But it may be possible to show that it is an amplification merely 

 of views expressed fully a quarter century ago, and that it 

 alone affords us a reasonable and exact basis on which to explain 

 the evolving complexities of organic bodies, up even to their 

 most intricate phenomena in man. 



Now in a survey of the Acaryota, even from the system- 

 atist's or taxonomic point of view, it is evident that the entire 

 classification of the group rests on the oft-confirmed view that 

 each species and genus continuously and hereditarily hands 

 down certain definite characters by wliich such a species or 

 genus can be distinguished from its neighbors. These char- 

 acters may be said to depend on one of two possible conditions. 

 First, two species of a genus, or two related genera, may contain 

 exactly the same materials or compounds, but in one of the 

 two these may be different in amount, or be disposed along 

 different lines of energy than in another. Many species or 

 even genera seem often to differ in such connection alone. 

 Second, in one case a definite chemical substance or substances 



