I20 ANDREWS. 



The final problem falls thus, for the time, wholly within the 

 realm of metaphysics, and the biologist must become again 

 the naturalist if he is to win from his toil anything but 

 negative results. 



[in] The facts seem to me to instruct us that, to the liv- 

 ing substance as such, form, as well as size, is mere incident. 

 Structure, so far as it has been detected or inferred, becomes 

 for the time being secondary in importance, as it is in origin, 

 to the habit of the substance; and we are warned that when 

 regard is had chiefly to visible structure as such, or when this 

 is taken to be an explanation of phenomena rather than an 

 expression of substance habit; when it is taken to be the cause 

 rather than the effect; the record becomes to us a cypher 

 instead of language. 



[112] For structure, as far as I have traced it, was still seen 

 to be a mask behind which the most important business of the 

 living world is carried on undetected. 



Nature might well be likened to a great spider, spinning and 

 spinning the living stuff and weaving it into tapestries; and 

 still hiding herself and the ever-lengthening thread of vital 

 phenomena behind the web already spun. To nature, the fact 

 of prime importance seems to be the substance, — the substance 

 — the substance; whether as mass, area, organ, or organism. 

 Nothing seems to be of great account with her compared with 

 the character and possibilities of the material she is dealing 

 with, — and truly it is a most plastic stuff. 



One realises in thinking over such facts as have been here 

 described, that, from this standpoint, man's classifications, 

 though significant, are not inviolable. He has concerned him- 

 self chiefly with individuals, organisms, species, and races; 

 with form, and with structure as the exponent of form. 



But it is to the living substance as such that all nature's 

 pliant cherishing has regard. Form and structure are used to 

 this end; they are not in themselves ends for her. From such 

 a standpoint, distinction between individual organisms and the 

 substance as such is mere child's play. That has been man's 

 game with the substance which he has found strewn about him 

 in pieces he can grasp, arrange in lines and group as he will ; — 



