COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



life upon the earth, beginning with innumerable 

 jelly-like patches of protoplasm, like the mo- 

 nera discovered by Professor Haeckel, and end- 

 ing with more than two million species of plants 

 and animals such as naturalists classify, has been 

 a change from homogeneity to heterogeneity, 

 will be denied by no one. Nor is it needful to 

 repeat, save for form's sake, what was sufficiently 

 illustrated in an earlier chapter, — that the 

 higher forms are also those in which the various 

 orders of integration are most completely ex- 

 emplified. We need only to note that the con- 

 tinuous adjustment of the organism to its en- 

 vironment, in which process we have seen that 

 life consists, must necessitate both the differen- 

 tiation of the organism and the integration or 

 definite combination of the changes which con- 

 stitute its activity. For as the life becomes 

 higher the environment itself increases in hete- 

 rogeneity as well as in extent. The environ- 

 ment of a fresh-water alga is, as Mr. Spencer 

 remarks, limited to the ditch or pool in which 

 the alga lives. The acaleph borne along on a 

 wave of the sea has a much more homogeneous 

 environment than the caterpillar which crawls 

 over leaves ; and the actions by which the cat- 

 erpillar must "meet the varying effects of grav- 

 itation '' are far more heterogeneous than the 

 actions of the acaleph. In the case of the higher 

 animals, not only is their environment extremely 

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