CoGNiTic State of Energy 145 



of dormancy is often a long one, and since there is a slow con- 

 tinuance of respiratory and other biotic conditions involving 

 waste, unattended by times when fresh supplies of food are 

 absorbed, the animal emerges from its rest period greatly 

 reduced in tissue constituents, and so in its capacity for active 

 cognitic response. 



The case of such fishes as Lepidosiren and Protopterus is 

 of interest, since we have an entire group that for long ages 

 has been fresh water in habit, and that now lives amid environal 

 states which change from a shallow fresh water to a dried mud 

 condition. Through environal action and proenvironal reac- 

 tion, these fishes have become perfectly adapted for survival 

 through periods of from at least two to four months. 



All such conditions as those above described demonstrate 

 at once the demarcation line that can clearly be traced between 

 the biotic and the cognitic states, at the same time that they 

 indicate the intimate and dovetailing character of the proto- 

 plasmic and of the chromatin substance. Could the biochem- 

 ist show that transition materials like plastin and nuclein 

 link together both substances, such would be a helpful step 

 toward proof that a steady transformation and condensation 

 from biotic to cognitic energy is also a typical phenomenon 

 of nucleated plants and animals. 



So instead of saying, as has often been done in the past, 

 "we do not understand the nature of living matter," and yet 

 of declaring that living matter may be defined as "a certain 

 protoplasmic architecture, which implies essential relations 

 between nucleoplasm and cytoplasm," we would consider that 

 it had its commencing foundation in colloid materials; that, 

 under the action of inorganic energies and later gradually of 

 biotic energy, it became synthesized into complex molecules; 

 that these gradually assumed alternating condensation and 

 expenditure of this biotic energy, in an autotrophic, autorespira- 

 tory, and autoauxanotic capacity, also in a power of multi- 

 plication by expansion or division of the colloid membrane, 

 through osmotic pressure action and growth strengthening. 



Later, and for the great majority of organisms now living, 

 a striking advance was made, through increased complexity 



