THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. 169 



further that, within this organism, it will go on following out 

 its own rhythms of habit and function which are to continue 

 the race-history. It seems indeed that embryonic and siibse- 

 qnetit developmental oi'ganization of protoplasmic elements, has 

 not for its true reason nor its true end a formation of organisms 

 in the common acceptation of that word ; bict that these are 

 sccojidary to certaiji habits of the general substance, causing 

 simple or complex vesicular organs which are formed ajid 

 function for that substance as such ; i7i short that it is tJie life- 

 history of the co7itinuous substance that is of prime importance, 

 the life-history of organisms being incidentally included m and 

 created by this, leavifig wide margin of both structural and 

 functional life that belongs strictly to the substance as race organ. 



In artificial selection, the breeder must influence many mil- 

 lions of substance habits of local vesicular deposit and function, 

 of the place or bearing of which in the race history of the 

 substance he can have no idea. In mutilation experiments 

 the same holds true. We do not know the meaning of tails as 

 substance habits but only as appendages of the mass, and so 

 cannot guess what effect on the formative substance organism 

 their removal could have. Types artificially enforced must 

 either happen to fall in with the trend and rhythm of dominant 

 race habits, or die out, or be able to pass through these tem- 

 porary habits and return to those lines established, — for the 

 substance habit of selection and use of specific environment 

 can, it seems to me, readily return to normal effort when 

 freed from enforced government of grafted conditions. In 

 fertilization experiments one must realize that not only the 

 continuous substance of the sperm but that of the ovum 

 carries long established, selective and reactive habits. Along 

 what lines these can be influenced rightly, or how, we do not 

 know. My results seem to me to throw from so many 

 sides clear light upon recent embryological experiment that 

 they hardly need the direct critical application denied here 

 by lack of space. 



Long ago the discovery of reflex actions of organisms 

 really introduced us, without our knowledge, to a threshold 

 of this new standpoint, — teaching how linked sequence and 



