THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. I 73 



gratitude and praise. Had it not been for his masterly work, 

 these researches at least would not have been carried on so 

 effectively, nor expressed in so unified a terminology which 

 seems to add much to their value. I may say that, until after 

 many repeated series of observations, I was quite neutral as to 

 this vesicular theory, — if with any bias, was adverse to it. 

 The possible interaction of physical, chemical, and physi- 

 ological conditions in so sensitive, so powerful, and so causa- 

 tive an arrangement as is found in the living emulsive 

 foam, passes all imagination, and offers wonderful oppor- 

 tunities of evolution along lines of substance habit. For 

 another interesting result of these researches would seem 

 to be a re-birth of "natural selection," making this again 

 appear the powerful agent in evolution of organisms that Dar- 

 win believed it to be. We must remember that he said, 

 ^'Natural Selection can act on every internal organ, on every 

 shade of co7tstitutional difference, on the whole macJiinery of 

 life" His line of argument becomes perforce artificial where- 

 ever he attempts to decide the usefulness of any such differ- 

 ence solely in relation to the organism in which it is 

 found. Again and again, being confronted with this difficulty 

 of linking values of structural or functional differences with 

 the life-history of the organism, Darwin was compelled to find 

 escape along lines of benefit to the species of organisms, — 

 and this truly brings the matter at once into the ground of my 

 offered standpoint. Natural selection acting upon substance 

 structures and substance organs dives deeper into life mys- 

 teries, is more searchingly constraining upon the race-history, 

 than it ever could be by acting upon mere organism structures 

 and organs, — that application of the theory must stumble and 

 fail wherever it meets one of the many sacrifices of the unit for 

 the substance organism as prime meaning or end. Instead of 

 saying with Darwin " Natural selection it should never be for- 

 gotten can act in each part of each being solely through and 

 for its advantage," I would say rather, * through and for the 

 advantage of the substance as such and especially as race 

 organ.' Re-reading the Origin of Species, I have been amazed 

 at elimination of what have always seemed like obscurities 



