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ANDREWS. 



at moments seemed to make the living organism ever more 

 and more an automatic result of physical and chemical adjust- 

 ments and relations; — let me remind, nay, urge upon the 

 reader, that behind and beyond this automatism, the living 

 substance has been shown to be still unrevealed to us, still 

 transcending existing arrangements though always by and 

 through these expressing its unexplained, inherent, powers and 

 properties. For in all structures, however relatively stable 

 they seem to us, the protoplastic substance is always ready 

 and eager for more radical physiological self-expression. And 

 it is this substance that is the true organism, by whose secre- 

 tions, excretions, and dispositions of its surplus material in an 

 organized vesicular way, the secondary and more patent organ- 

 ism with which we are familiar is formed. Perhaps one of 

 the most important things shown is that this protoplastic sub- 

 stance is everywhere capable of just such organization of its 

 powers in relation to its internal opportunities, as produces in 

 organisms, from the lowest to the highest, all perceptive inter- 

 course with mass environment. We may limit the word per- 

 ceptive to the lowest form of sentience, but in and from this 

 can arise by gradations the highest sorts known to us, even ap- 

 perception and idea. In other words the substance organism 

 has within the limits of invisible vesicular organization all that 

 is requisite for true physiological habits and instincts, akin to 

 those of the patent organism. The simplest and most primi- 

 tive form of living substance we can get, and the smallest 

 sub-divisions of this we can see with the microscope, is still a 

 complex organism functioning for the race-substance, — is still, 

 old as the hills, and very wise. 



In its inseparable physical form and chemical constitution 

 lie the necessity and the temptation of a physical basis upon 

 and through which to postulate the life phenomena of the 

 living substance, since it expresses and must express itself 

 through these conditionings. Because he has supplied in great 

 part this intrinsic necessity of the science of biology, and in 

 such form, that, with some extension and modification, it can be 

 brought directly into relation with substance phenomena down 

 to the smallest seen or inferred; — Butschli deserves highest 



