136 



ANDREWS. 



of the parent substance, where were gradually segregated from 

 the parental store some precious continuous substance with 

 enough inclusion material of varied nature to serve the latter 

 then and after for variably long periods of its career. Expe- 

 rience of a disconnected set of facts, and a natural inclination 

 to regard the state of being a unit or entity as of more impor- 

 tance than the state of being continuous in kind, or character, 

 with other units; have inclined us to think more often and 

 more strongly of egg and sperm as future but imperfect organ- 

 isms, than as what would seem to be their still more important 

 character; namely, areas of dijferentiation of the parent orgajtism. 

 Like the lungs, heart, stomach, liver, — or even like the ovary 

 and testis themselves, — they stand structurally for mass organs 

 and for substance organs. And they contain characteristic 

 quantities and distributions of the continuous substance in 

 relation to specific materials. They should, I cannot but 

 believe, be considered more from this point of view to be better 

 understood. It will presently be spoken of how they arrogate 

 to themselves the service of the whole machine and being 

 served to the full extent of the powers of this, or to the satis- 

 faction of their own intrinsic necessities as perpetuation areas, 

 the machine may perish, if no better may be. As the daily, 

 winter, or emergency store of nutriment is laid up for a periodic 

 and rhythmically recurrent or intermittent set of conditions for 

 the organism as a whole, so it is laid up in these areas for a set 

 of conditions which are periodically or rhythmically recurrent 

 in the race-history. 



[130] From this standpoint, the organism appears in the 

 guise of a machine or device framed by the substance as such 

 to secure its own specific internal environment ; especially to 

 secure this for that phase in which it assumes the role of off- 

 spring substance. There are frequently large and most com- 

 plex areas set aside for the function of preparing and selecting 

 from the sum of the parents' internal environment substance 

 needed by the perpetuation or offspring areas. A machine 

 within a machine is formed for use and service of the nursling 

 substance. (See Parasitism, Fosterhood, Heredity.) 



The supply by parent organisms of specific internal environ- 



