THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



the various tissues. These histonal individuals are 

 called sprouts in the plant world and persons in the ani- 

 mal world. At a still higher stage of organization we 

 have the trunk or stem (cormus), which is made up of a 

 number of sprouts or persons, like the tree or the coral- 

 stem. In the fixed animal stems the associated individ- 

 uals have a direct bodily connection, and take their 

 food in common; but in the social aggregations of the 

 higher animals it is the ideal link of common interest that 

 unites the individuals, as in swarms of bees, colonies of 

 ants, herds of mammals, etc. These communities are 

 sometimes called "animal-states." Like human polities, 

 they are organisms of a higher type. 



However, in order to avoid misunderstanding, we 

 must take the word "organism" in the sense in which 

 most biologists use it — namely, to designate an in- 

 dividual living thing, the material substratum of which 

 is plasm or "living substance" — a nitrogenous carbon- 

 compound in a semi-fluid condition. It leads to a good 

 deal of misunderstanding when separate functions are 

 called organisms, as is done sometimes in speaking of the 

 soul or of speech. It would be just as correct to call see- 

 ing or running an organism. It is advisable also in 

 scientific treatises to refrain from calling inorganic 

 compounds as such "organisms," as, for instance, the 

 sea or the whole earth. Such names, having a purely 

 symbolical value, may very well be used in poetry. The 

 rhythmic wave-movement of the ocean may be re- 

 garded as its respiration, the surge as its voice, and so 

 on. Many scientists (like Fechner) conceive the whole 

 earth Vv^ith all its organic and inorganic contents as a 

 gigantic organism, whose countless organs have been 

 arranged in an orderly whole by the world-reason 

 (God). In the same way the physiologist, Preyer, re- 

 gards the glowing heavenly bodies as "gigantic or- 

 ganisms, whose breath is, perhaps, the glowing vapor 



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