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ANDREWS. 



We cannot predicate either the constitution or the final action 

 of the living substance. What composes it, or how it grows, 

 or is weakened, or dissolved, seems further from our knowledge 

 than before, because all we have to base any theory on is 

 chemical interactions between substances, none of which we 

 can assert to be the constituents of the actual living substance. 

 All the production of energy, all the waste correlated with it, 

 may belong to the environmental conditions purely of the living 

 substance. Its action upon them and even the waste products 

 of this expenditure of energy may be wholly beyond our analysis. 

 We may not yet have discovered the mode of analysis which 

 can resolve for us these products, — if, even, they are chemical 

 conditions known to us and within reach of our gross handling. 

 It seems probable from these researches that out of the sum 

 of all the innumerable chemical and physical conditions sought 

 and appropriated by protoplasm, a few certain ones only are 

 needed for actual perpetuation and reconstruction or construc- 

 tion of the living particles, and that the bulk and majority of 

 them are to serve as opportunities and stimulus for its internal 

 powers and activities. It has been stated that owing to the 

 physical form of the substance, growth of living masses can 

 take place to an enormous degree without increase of amount 

 of the actual living substance. Whether or no the living sub- 

 stance itself is renewed by the myriad substances it accumulates 

 within and about it, it is certain that these actually form its 

 specific environment and the sum of the opportunities of its 

 lamellar subdivisions, and that upon the selection and use of 

 these both by the organism and by the minute portions of the 

 protoplasm, depend the normality and organization of its activi- 

 ties and the correlation of its phenomena, — more than this, 

 the preservation of its life. In short, however we decide upon 

 the question raised, the life history of the organism, from the 

 time of its inception as an area of the parent mass, may be 

 expressed in terms of supply for its internal environment. For 

 the intrinsic powers and properties of the visible supposed living 

 substance, are found to be alike wherever it was examined. Its 

 specific areal modifications of function and products are to be 

 taken apart from these. 



