i 
56 Views on the Nature of Organic Structure. 
Another step remains to complete our conception of the whole 
life of organic structures. What then is growth, and how is it 
to be conceived or explained? 
The ideal of an organism extends through its entire cycle of 
being. The ideal of an oak is not the mere form of to-day, but 
that aggregate of formal progressions included between the acorn 
and the decaying oak. It includes provision for everything 
needed to insure its normal perpetuity. The history of an or 
ganic individual or species must always contain the two great 
elements of original constitution and circumstantial position. 
m simple ordinary molecules, may be made to embody 
static aud dynamic ideals. The forces appertaining to the ulti- 
mate units of matter are quite adequate to work out ideals ex- 
tending over the changes of a lifetime. In all organisms, the 
normal changes are progressive, and exemplify the Jaw of con- 
tinuity. This continuity extends unbroken through countless 
generations, always exhibiting strict conformity to mechanical 
requisitions. The wheel of specific life rolls steadily on, while 
its points describe the cycloids of individual life. A present struc- 
ture may be so composed that the molecular forces acting be 
ferential warlds, whose integrals are seen in organic masses, move 
ou, planet-like, in the round of their mechanically determined 
. 
orbits. 
‘That intellect which was large enough to idealize man, Was; 
doubtless, large enough so to construct his that the constit- 
its beginning far into the unenacted future, may have been struc- 
