From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



time the cells of the middle intestine assemble in a 

 central mass, making a sort of magma.' 1 



Then a new generation of tissue takes place, partly 

 from the magma resulting from the histolysis, partly 

 from the proliferation of special corpuscles called image- 

 bearing discs. The newly-formed portions of the 

 organism thus seem to have no direct filiation with the 

 destroyed parts of the larval organism. 



Whether we like it or not, the evidence of such facts 

 upsets all the classical biologic concepts chemical 

 equilibrium as conditioning specific form, cellular 

 affinity, functional assimilation, the animal as a cellular 

 complex, all become so many vain formulae and non- 

 sense! 



Either we must be content to bow before the mystery 

 and declare it impenetrable, or we must have the 

 courage to avow that classical physiology has lost its 

 way. 



In order to understand all these the mystery of 

 specific form, embryonic and post-embryonic develop- 

 ment, the constitution and maintenance of the personality, 

 organic repair, and all the other general problems of 

 biology it is necessary and sufficient to accept a notion, 

 which is certainly not new, but is placed in a new light, 

 the notion of a dynamism superior to the organism and 

 conditioning it. 



This is not the ' directive idea ' of Claude Bernard, 

 which is a kind of abstraction, an incomprehensible 

 metaphysico-biological entity. This is a concrete idea 

 that of a directing and centralising dynamism, domin- 

 ating both intrinsic and extrinsic contingencies, the 

 chemical reactions of the organic medium, and the 

 influences of the external environment. 



We shall find the existence of this dynamism affirmed 

 in like manner, not more certainly, but more evidentially, 

 in the so-called supernormal physiology. There indeed 



1 F61ix Henneguy : Les Insectes. 



49 



