THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. 1 67 



not a foam, would still be substance organ because of its physi- 

 cal form. Each substance organ and each compound of such 

 may be truly said to be multi-functional. Even a single vesicle 

 of Biitschli's structure has complex possibilities. From each 

 minutest substance organ go functional products, and each 

 receives from other such. The physical, chemical and physio- 

 logical interactions and interrelations go beyond imagination 

 even. Owing to the peculiar inherent powers of the living 

 substance, the indirectness of release stimulus, both from 

 within and without the mass involves a vast field of enquiry. 

 From all these things it comes to pass that the use or function of 

 a substance organ, or group of such, can be for the orgajiism 

 quite other than what it expresses for the substance as such. 

 The organism can profit by the secondary, the incidental rela- 

 tion or interrelations and the substance as such will again 

 profit by this. We know organs to some extent as they func- 

 tion for the organism, but how they arose as substance organs, 

 or by what set of influences and interactions their function in 

 the grosser set of interrelations came about, we are as yet 

 wholly ignorant. The invisible structural and functional rela- 

 tions shape and move the finer foam and invisibly influence 

 the mass and its internal functions and structural relations; 

 secondary and tertiary vesicular organizations shape and move 

 masses in a manner more patent to our perceptions. We see 

 these grosser and secondary relations and call them " the 

 organism," identifying them with the mass. But it is the 

 substance organism underlying and building these up by its 

 functions that is the true organism. 



The materials with which the continuous substance is sur- 

 rounded are assuredly of prime importance as regards any out- 

 come of its attempted self-expression; and one must never 

 forget that this necessary conditioning extends through all the 

 vesicular series into the invisible foam organism. Then too, 

 just as in the grosser organs we know are found extensions of 

 vascular, nervous, secretory systems, so in each minuter group 

 of organs, are still more minute extensions of structural and 

 functional habit of the substance, and these connect distant 

 areas or organizations in which it may or may not be more 



