Organization in Relation to Environment 801 



stance remains the same in composition; in staining capacity and 

 affinities, in its chemical reactions, and disintegration products. 



So, while the protoplasm that is traversed and "vitalized" 

 by biotic energy is a universal organic basis, the chromatin 

 is confined to nucleated plants and animals, and confers on 

 them a quickened sense perception and response. Further, 

 with its segregation hereditary traits became condensed in it, 

 and sexual reproduction became an accompaniment of its 

 presence. 



But, as cognitic or sense response became increasingly per- 

 fected amongst nucleate animals, a third and slowly evolved 

 substance was built up in special cells — the nerve ganglia — 

 and by aid of a more perfect form of energy, the cogitic, that 

 enabled the organisms to form more complex and interlinked 

 impressions of a mental hind. This we regard as the Nissl 

 substance or neuratin that reaches its greatest condensation in 

 Man, but extends in unbroken line from the coelenterates 

 and worms upward, as studies like those of Smallwood and 

 Rogers show (5^; 45). By action of the cognitic energy, and 

 by aid of a still more perfect form of energy, the cogitic, tra- 

 versing the Nissl substance, mental impressions were formed 

 and in particular were correlated into ever more complex 

 resultants. Some of these resultants were of an inhibitory 

 nature, designed to counteract injurious effects to the organ- 

 ism, others were motor and beneficial in action. Finally in 

 man alone, or possibly in him along with the higher monkeys, 

 there evidently exists a more complex form of energy than the 

 biotic, cognitic, or even cogitic, and which we have termed 

 the spiritic. We are as yet unaware of any special brain or 

 nerve ganglionic substance with which this energy might be 

 associated, though the suggestion has been made tliat those 

 highly typical areas of the brain — the frontal convolutions — 

 may possibly be developing in connection with such condensed 

 combinations of energy. But all of those higlily complex 

 phenomena, that enable man to link himself to the widest 

 forces of the universe, and that permit him to express his 

 highest thoughts and aspirations in speech and writing, that 



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