THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. I 75 



it. And I think it will be long before most people will agree 

 to think differently, before they will be willing to believe that 

 all the structures and functions, visible and invisible, included 

 in the skin of their familiar dog, or cat, or horse, do not pecu- 

 liarly and wholly belong to that being, are not primarily for, 

 and just to express, that individuality: — how otherwise ex- 

 plain the strange unity and purposive harmony of external 

 features, of grosser or even minuter structural characters, or 

 the interrelations of parts and powers, and of functions; then 

 again these things mean normal life and function to the organ- 

 ism as such, deprivation of them means to it maimed or 

 pathological states, or death even, and many of them are 

 seen to act directly for and to subserve its existence. To ask 

 man to think of these things as but incidental to minute, local, 

 vesicular, organization and function of a protoplastic ground 

 substance which must itself depend on that grosser organism 

 for very continuance of life, — surely this is an unfair, even a 

 ludicrous, demand upon human intelligence ! To even the 

 thinking public, the question raised must for a long time to 

 come seem to be mere mental juggling — a sleight of idea 

 trick, or an effort to apply metaphysical methods and a mysti- 

 cal standpoint to biological fact. If the sum total of parts 

 and powers included within an animal's limits are not indeed 

 its own, are not for it, — whose and for what are they .? Only 

 three years back such a question would have seemed too absurd 

 to be asked — may even yet seem so — and it is not many 

 years since the means of perceiving or answering it have been 

 in our hands. But I think to those, (they will be few), who 

 will read with patient thought the long and minute record of 

 selected facts in the foregoing pages, this question will not 

 only thrust itself forward as it has done for me, but will bring 

 with it an answer of sufficient assurance to swerve the trend 

 of research more and more strongly toward the lines indicated. 

 The offered standpoint does not miss the utmost interdepend- 

 ence of parts and powers of any living unit, — it makes this 

 more radically certain and clear than has yet been understood, 

 showing that each and all are of value in the true organism's 

 life; it does not hide from us that these form or maintain the 



