THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. 



^37 



ment or conditions for their offspring substance, and their 

 labours to this end, seem still more wonderful when the 

 offspring has undergone complete separation than when it is 

 still an integral part of the parent. I should group the latter 

 cases with those preparations made by the substance as embryo 

 or larva for conditions not as yet unexperienced. 



[131] The attitude of the parent organism with respect to 

 its offspring or perpetuation areas is evinced by its often 

 directly renouncing its own specific environment or even its 

 own continued existence for their supply. 



[132] A certain control of the living substance by external 

 environment was the great theory set before us by Darwin. 

 Yet it is not control by external environment of the substance 

 as organism, but of internal environment by the substance as 

 such which primarily rules the course of events and rules them 

 most despotically, even to the point of independence and 

 dissociation of the organism from external environment. 



[133] Substance habit, which in one aspect may everywhere 

 and at all times be expressed by terms of organization of in- 

 ternal environment with relation to the substance, has always 

 been along lines of increased control, direct or indirect, of 

 external environmental conditions; sometimes by increased 

 differentiation, sometimes, as in certain cases of endoparasital 

 existence, in the direction of greater simplicity of areal 

 differentiation. 



[134] In each act of the substance, we cannot escape the 

 preformed machine, but at least in formation of a new machine, 

 or new parts, or rearrangements, of the old, we see each step 

 controlled by activities which seem to transcend the limit of 

 power of the physical and chemical conditions of all visible 

 machinery. All reactions of the organism to environment 

 appear to me to express substance reaction to pre-existing and 

 specially prepared internal environment; to express the intrinsic 

 powers of the substance under specific stimulus or direction 

 from within rather than from without, — powers which, though 

 they are for us finally inseparable from its physical and chemical 

 composition, are still seen as separate from, and to great extent 

 controlling, these. 



