800 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



basic life substance of every cell, from the simplest non-nucleate 

 cell of the lowest plant, to the highest ganglion cell of man — 

 protoplasm. This we have regarded, for reasons already given, 

 as the molecularly complex material that is energized by a 

 higher and more perfect energy than even electricity, which 

 we have named the hiotic. Formed early probably in the 

 archsean epoch as a complex matter-energy combination, it 

 exhibits amongst the protophytic and protozootic groups vege- 

 tative activities that we classify physiologically as the irrit- 

 able, the nutritive, the respiratory, the asexual-reproductive. 

 But its irritable responses are feeble, sluggish, largely local 

 and uncorrelated. This protoplasm nevertheless persists, even 

 may increase in amount for new individuals, along the scale 

 of advancing plant and animal life, but, in its fundamental 

 composition, its staining capacity and affinities, its chemical 

 reactions, its disintegration products, it retains the same quali- 

 ties throughout. Every organism then has its foundations 

 laid in a vegetative or biotic substance — the protoplasm — 

 that has retained a fundamental sameness of relation from 

 archsean days to the present, and is a common and continuous 

 heritage from the simplest bacterium or blue-green algae or 

 moneran up to super-man. 



Second, with advance of the archsean epoch a gradual pro- 

 gression or elaboration took place within this protoplasm, as 

 a still higher and more complex exhibition of energy, the cog- 

 nitic. So there segregated off by slow degrees — as seen in 

 higher Blue-green Algae and in some protozootic organisms 

 still living^-a more complex labile responsive substance that 

 differentiated into an irritable network permeating the proto- 

 plasm, centered in the nucleolus, and having a special area of 

 action, the nucleus. This we call the chromatin substance. 

 With its final differentiation all nucleated organisms showed 

 and continue to show a delicate correlated or resultant sense- 

 response to light, to gravity, to heat, to chemical agents and 

 other environal stimuli, that is as typical of higher Algse and 

 Infusoria as it is of man. The quality or concentrated capa- 

 city for response may vary much, but the fundamental sub- 



