THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. 



Heredity. 



151 



[148] ^ Up to this point it has been cumulatively shown that 

 cell phenomena are underlain by such phenomena of the con- 

 tinuous substance as would seem to inhibit us from using cells, 

 even broadly, as primary units of physiological organization ; — 

 the new facts urging us to trace substance phenomena in a 

 physical and physiological continuity throughout all parts of 

 organisms ; to ignore cell limits, except as they fall within this 

 interpretation ; to see in cell walls and in nuclei local and even 

 temporary substance organs belonging primarily to the mass 

 and but secondarily to cells, their curious repetition being taken 

 in relation to general needs of the substance as such rather 

 than as parts of cells as units of structure ; — in sJiort to study 

 cells as localities in a mass organization of the contimwns sub- 

 stance and as local expressio7is of substance habit in a signifi- 

 cantly common grouping. From this standpoint and by use of 

 the nai've method of thought approach, the grosser organs and 

 structures of organisms become replaced by an intricate maze 

 or web of substance organs. Organs no longer appear as 

 compounds of certain different sorts of cells, but as a complex 

 of minute substance organs whose multiplication baffles even 

 the imagination, for they not only extend in a lessening series 

 into the invisible subdivisions of the continuous substance but 

 are constantly being transmuted into new structures. 



The physical form of the contractile irritable substance 

 offers peculiar opportunities for physical organization, for each 

 vesicle is a nucleus of varied causative power and may form in 

 the series of emulsive foams a radiating centre of influence 

 along several, or along many, lines of continuous substance 

 and of vesicles. Each local aggregate of inclusion fluids of 

 kindred sorts forms at once a true substance organ whose pos- 

 sible structural and functional values are many. The physical 

 form of the living substance of itself may be said to initiate or 

 even compel a formation of substance organs, the chemical 

 nature of the constituents to extend and qualify this natural 

 compulsion, while activities of the living matter may expand, 



^ Whole section to be read under this number. 



