45. There is a marked difference between organic and organised substances. The organic are non-living, though capable of living when incorporated in organized tissue (albumen is such a substance); or they may be incapable of living because they have lived, and are products of waste, e. g. urea. The organized substance is a specific combination of organic substances of various kinds, a combination which is organization. Any organized substance is therefore either an independent organism, or part of a more complex organism. Protoplasm, either as a separate organism or as a constituent of a tissue, is organized substance.
Organic substances are numerous and specific. They are various combinations of proximate principles familiar to the chemist, which may conveniently be ranged under three classes: The first class of organic substances comprises those composed of principles having what is called a mineral origin; these generally quit the organism unchanged as they entered it. The second class comprises those which are crystallizable, and are formed in the organism, and generally quit it in this state as excretions. The third class comprises the colloids, i. e. substances which are coagulable and not crystallizable, and are formed in and decomposed in the organism, thus furnishing the principles of the second class. All the principles are in a state of solution. Water is the chief38 vehicle of the materials which enter and the materials which quit the organism; and bodies in solution are solvents of others, so that the water thus acquires new solvent properties.
45a. Two points must be noted respecting organic substances: they are mostly combinations of higher multiples of the elements; and their combinations are not definite in quantity. Albumen, for example, has (according to one of the many formulas which have been given) an elementary composition of 216 atoms of Carbon, 169 of Hydrogen, 27 of Nitrogen, 3 of Sulphur, and 68 of Oxygen; whereas in its final state, in which it quits the organism as Urea, it is composed of 2 atoms of Carbon, 4 of Hydrogen, 2 of Nitrogen, and 2 of Oxygen, all the Sulphur having disappeared in other combinations. In like manner in the organism Stearin falls from C114, H110, O12, to Oxalic Acid, which is C4, H2, O8. It is obvious that the necessary modifiability of organic substance is due to this multiplicity of its elementary parts and the variety of its molecular structure.
45b. Nor is the indefiniteness of the quantitative composition less important, though seldom adequately appreciated, or even suspected. Robin and Verdeil11 are the only writers I can remember who have distinctly brought the fact into prominence. That all inorganic substances are definite in composition, every one knows. Quicklime, for example, may be got from marble, limestone, oyster-shells, or chalk; but however produced, it always contains exactly 250 ounces of calcium to 100 ounces of oxygen; just as water is always OH2. Not so the pre-eminently vital substances, those which are coagulable and not crystallizable: no precise formula will express one of these; for the same specific substance is found to vary from time to time, and elementary analyses do not39 give uniform results. Thus, if after causing an acid to combine with one of these substances, we remove the acid, we are not certain of finding the substance as it was before—as we are, for example, after urea is combined with nitric acid and then decomposed. The same want of definiteness is of course even more apparent in the combinations of these proximate principles into organized substance. Protoplasm differs greatly in different places. Epithelial cells differ. Muscular and nervous fibres are never absolutely the same in different regions. A striped and unstriped muscular fibre, the muscular fibre of a sphincter or of a limb, a nerve-fibre in a centre, in a trunk, or in a gland, will present variations of composition. The elastic fibres of the ligaments are larger in the horse than in man; and in other animals they are smaller. These differences are sometimes due to the constituents, and sometimes to the arrangement of the constituents; the conversion of Albumen into Fibrine without elementary loss or addition, is a good example of the latter. That the tissues of one man are not absolutely the same as the tissues of another, in the sense in which it is true to say that the chalk of one hill is the same as that of another, or as gold in Australia is the same as gold in Mexico, is apparent in their very different reactions under similar external conditions: the substance which poisons the one leaves the other unaffected. The man who has once had the small-pox, or scarlet fever, is never the same afterwards, since his organism has now become insusceptible of these poisons. And Sir James Paget has called attention to the striking fact revealed in disease, namely, that in the same tissue—say the bone or the skin—a morbid substance fastens only on certain small portions leaving all the rest unaltered, but fastens on exactly corresponding spots of the opposite sides of the body; so that on both arms, or both legs, only the corresponding40 bits of tissue will be diseased. “Manifestly when two substances display different relations to a third their composition cannot be identical; so that though we may speak of all bone or of all skin as if it were all alike, yet there are differences of intimate composition. No power of artificial chemistry can detect the difference; but a morbid material can.”12 It is to this variability of composition that we must refer individual peculiarities, and those striking forms of variety known as idiosyncrasies, which cause some organisms to be affected by what seem inexplicable influences—physical and moral.
In spite of all these variations, however, there are certain specific resemblances dependent of course on similarity of composition and structure, so that the muscle of a crustacean is classed beside the muscle of a vertebrate, although the elementary analysis of the two yields different results. Nerve-tissue, according to my experience, is the most variable of all, except the blood; variable not only from individual to individual, and from genus to genus, but even in the same individual it never contains the same quantities of water, phosphates, etc. Hence it is that different nerves manifest different degrees of excitability, and the same nerve differs at different times. Thus the fifth pair, in a poisoned animal, retains its excitability long after the others are paralyzed; and the patient under chloroform feels a prick on the brow or at the temples, when insensible at any other spot. The pneumogastric which is excitable during digestion is—in dogs at least—inexcitable when the animal is fasting.
46. The organic substances are what analysis discovers in organized substances, but none of them, not even the highest, is living, except as organized. Albumen alone, or Stearin alone, is as incapable of Vitality, as Plumbago, or Soda; but all organic substances are capable of playing a41 part in vital actions; and this part is the more important in proportion to their greater molecular variety. Organization is a special synthesis of substances belonging to all three classes; and the organized substance, thus formed, alone merits the epithet living. We see how organized substances, being constituted by principles derived from the inorganic world, and principles derived from the organic world, have at once a dependence on the external Medium, and an independence of it, which is peculiar to living beings. An analogous dependence and independence is noticeable with respect to the parts; and this is a character not found in inorganic compounds. The organism, even in its simplest forms, is a structure of different substances, each of which is complex. While one part of a crystal is atomically and morphologically identical with every other, and is the whole crystal “writ small,” one part of an organism is unlike another, and no part is like the whole. Hence the dependence of one organ and one tissue on another, and each on all. Yet, while every part is, so to speak, a condition of existence of every other, and the unity of the organism is but the expression of this solidarity,—wherever organized substance has been differentiated into morphological elements (cells, etc.), each of these has its own course of evolution independently of the others,—is born, nourished, developed, and dies.
47. The interdependence of nerve and muscle is seen in this, that the more the muscle is excited the feebler its contractions become; this decrease in contractility is compensated by an increased excitability in its nerve; so that while the muscle demands a more powerful stimulus, the nerve acquires a more energetic activity. Ranke’s curious and careful experiments seem to prove that this depends on the wearied muscle absorbing more water, owing to the acids developed by its activity, and on the nerve losing42 this water—a nerve being always more irritable when its quantity of water diminishes.
48. Herein we see illustrated the great law of organized activity, that it is a simultaneity of opposite tendencies, as organized matter is a synthesis of compositions and decompositions, always tending towards equilibrium and disturbance, storing up energy and liberating it. Unlike what is observed in unorganized matter, the conditions of waste bring with them conditions of repair, and thus—within certain limits—every loss in one direction is compensated by gain in another. There is a greater flow of nutrient material, or, more properly speaking, a greater assimilation of it by the tissue, where there has been made a greater opening for it by previous disintegration. The alkaline state of the nutrient material, and the acid state of the material that has been used,—the alkaline state which characterizes repose and assimilation, and the acid state which characterizes activity and deassimilation, are but cases of this general law; on the synthesis of these opposite tendencies depends the restless change, together with the continued specific integrity, of organized matter.
49. The state of organization may therefore be defined as the molecular union of the proximate principles of the three classes in reciprocal dissolution. An organism is formed of matter thus organized, which exists in two states—the amorphous and the figured. The amorphous substances are liquid, semi-liquid, and solid; the figured are the cells, fibres, and tubes, called “anatomical elements.” For these I prefer the term suggested, I believe, by Milne Edwards, namely, organites, because they are the individual elements which mainly constitute the organs, and are indeed by many biologists considered as elementary organisms. These organites, which go to form the tissues, and by the tissues the organs, have their specific43 form, volume, structure, and chemical reactions. They exist in textures or tissues, or separately (e. g. blood corpuscles), and are in many respects like the simplest organisms known, such as Monads, Vibrios, Am?b?, etc.
50. The simplest form of life is not—as commonly stated—a cell, but a microscopic lump of jelly-like substance, or protoplasm, which has been named sarcode by Dujardin, cytode by Haeckel, and germinal matter by Lionel Beale. This protoplasm, although entirely destitute of texture, and consequently destitute of organs, is nevertheless considered to be living, because it manifests the cardinal phenomena of Life: Assimilation, Evolution, Reproduction, Mobility, and Decay. Examples of this simplest organism are Monads, Protam?b?, and Polythalamia.13 Few things are more surprising than the vital activity of these organites, which puzzle naturalists as to whether they should be called plants or animals. All microscopists are familiar with the spectacle of a formless lump of albuminous matter (a Rhizopod) putting forth a process of its body as a temporary arm or leg, or else slowly wrapping itself round a microscopic plant, or morsel of animal substance, thus converting its whole body into a mouth and a stomach; but these phenomena are surpassed by those described by Cienkowski,14 who narrates how one Monad fastens on to a plant and sucks the chlorophyll first from one cell and then from another; another Monad, unable to make a hole in the cell-wall, thrusts long processes of its body into the opening already made, and drags out the remains of the chlorophyll left there by its predecessor; while a third Monad leads a predatory life, falling upon other Monads that have filled themselves with food. Here, as he says, we stand on the44 threshold of that dark region where Animal Will begins; and yet there is here only the simplest form of organization.15
51. Now let our glance pass on to the second stage—the Cell. Here we have a recognized differentiation in the appearance of a nucleus amid the protoplasm. The nucleus is chemically different from the substance which surrounds it; and although perhaps exaggerated importance has been attributed to this nucleus, and mysterious powers have been ascribed to it, yet as an essential constituent of the cell it commands attention. Indeed, according to the most recent investigations, the definition of a cell is “a nucleus with surrounding protoplasm.” The cell-wall, or delicate investing membrane—that which makes the cell a closed sac—is no longer to be regarded as a necessary constituent, but only as an accessory.16
45 52. The cell may be either an organism or an organite. It may lead an isolated life as plant or animal, or it may be united with others and lead a more or less corporate existence; but always, even as an element of a higher organism, it preserves its own individuality. At first we see that the corporate union is very slight, merely the contact of one cell with another of its own kind, as in the filament of a Conferva. Rising higher, we see the cell united with others different from it; plants and animals appear, having structures composed of masses of various cells. Rising still higher, we see animal forms of which the web is woven out of myriads upon myriads of cells, with various cell-products, processes, fibres, tubes.
ORGANISM AND MEDIUM.
 
53. But we have only one half of the great problem of life, when we have the organism; and it is to this half that the chief researches have been devoted, the other falling into neglect. What is that other? The Medium in which the organism lives. Every individual object, organic or inorganic, is the product of two factors:—first, the relation of its constituent molecules to each other; secondly, the relation of its substance to all surrounding objects. Its properties, as an object or an organism, are the results of its constituent molecules, and of its relation to external conditions. Organisms are the results of a peculiar group of forces, exhibiting a peculiar group of46 phenomena. Viewing these in the abstract, we may say that there are three regulative laws of life:—(1) The Lex Formationis—the so-called nisus formativus, or “organizing force”; (2) the Lex Adaptationis, or adaptive tendency; (3) the Lex Hereditatis, or tendency to reproduce both the original form and its acquired modifications. We have always to consider the organizing force in relation to all surrounding forces—a relation succinctly expressed in the word Adaptation. Just as water is water only under a certain relation of its constituent molecules to the temperature and atmospheric pressure—just as it passes into other forms (ice or steam) in adapting itself to other conditions; so, likewise, the organism only preserves its individuality by the adjustment of its forces with the forces which environ it.
54. This relation of Organism and Medium, the most fundamental of biological data, has had a peculiar fortune: never wholly unrecognized, for it obtrudes itself incessantly in the facts of daily experience, it was very late in gaining recognition as a principle of supreme importance; and is even now often so imperfectly apprehended that one school of philosophers indignantly rejects the idea of the Organism and Medium being the two factors of which Life is the product. Not only is there a school of vitalists maintaining the doctrine of Life as an entity independent both of Organism and Medium, and using these as its instruments; but there is also a majority among other biologists, who betray by their arguments that they fail to keep steadily before them the fundamental nature of the relation. Something of this is doubtless due to the imperfect conception they have formed of what constitutes the Medium; instead of recognizing in it the sum of external conditions affecting the organism—i. e. the sum of the relations which the organism maintains with external agencies,—they restrict,47 or enlarge it, so as to misapprehend its significance—restrict it to only a few of the conditions, such as climate, soil, temperature, etc., or enlarge it to embrace a vast array of conditions which stand in no directly appreciable relation to the organism. Every one understands that an organism is dependent on proper food, on oxygen, etc., and will perish if these are withheld, or be affected by every variation in such conditions. Every one understands that an animal which can devour or be devoured by another, will flourish or perish according to the presence of its prey or its enemy. But it is often forgotten that among external existences, all those which stand in no appreciable relation to the organism are not properly to be included in its Medium. In consequence of this oversight we frequently hear it urged as an objection to the Evolution Hypothesis, that manifold organisms exist under the same external conditions, and that organisms persist unchanged amid a great variety of conditions. The objection is beside the question. In the general sum of external forces there are certain items which are nearly related to particular organisms, and constitute their Medium; those items which are so distantly related to these organisms as to cause no reactions in them, are, for them, as if non-existent.17 Of the manifold vibrations which the ether is supposed to be incessantly undergoing, only certain vibrations affect the eye48 as light; these constitute the Medium of Sight; the others are as if they were not. Only certain vibrations of the air affect the ear as Sound; to all other vibrations we are deaf; though ears of finer sensibility may detect them and be deaf to those which affect us.
55. “The external conditions of existence” is therefore the correct definition of the Medium. An animal may be surrounded with various foods and poisons, but if its organism is not directly affected by them they cannot be food or poison to it. An animal may be surrounded with carnivorous rivals, but if it is not adapted to serve them as food, or is too powerful to be attacked by them, they only indirectly enter into its Medium, by eating the food it would eat. The analogy is similar with anorganisms and their relation to their media. Every physical or chemical phenomenon depends on the concurrence of definite conditions: namely, the substance which manifests the change, and the medium in which the change is manifested. Alter the medium, solid, liquid, or gaseous, change its thermal or electrical state, and the phenomenon is altered. But although similar alterations in the medium notoriously influence the organism, yet, because a great many variations in external conditions are unaccompanied by appreciable changes in the organism, there are biologists who regard this as a proof of Life being independent of physical and chemical laws; an error arising from their not recognizing the precise nature of organic conditions.
56. To give greater precision to the conception of a Medium it will be desirable to adopt the distinction much49 insisted on by Claude Bernard, namely, 1°, an External or Cosmical Medium, embracing the whole of the circumstances outside the organism, capable of directly affecting it, and 2°, an Internal or Physiological Medium, embracing the conditions inside the organism, and in direct relation with it—that is to say, the plasma in which its tissues are bathed, by which they are nourished. To these add its temperature and electrical conditions. Bernard only includes the nutritive fluid; but inasmuch as each organism possesses a temperature and electrical state of its own, and these are only indirectly dependent on the external temperature and electricity, and as it is with these internal conditions that the organism is in direct relation, I include them with the plasma among the constituents of the Physiological Medium. Any change in the External Medium, whether of temperature or electricity, of food or light, which does not disturb the Internal Medium, will of course leave the organism undisturbed; and for the most part all the changes in the External Medium which do affect the organism, affect it by first changing the Internal Medium. External heat or cold raises or depresses the internal temperature indirectly by affecting the organic processes on which the internal temperature depends. We see here the rationale of acclimatization. Unless the organism can adapt itself to the new External Medium by the readjustment of its Internal Medium, it perishes.
57. We are now enabled to furnish an answer to the very common objection respecting the apparent absence of any direct influence of external conditions. Let the objection first be stated in the words of a celebrated naturalist, Agassiz: “It is a fact which seems to be entirely overlooked by those who assume an extensive influence of physical causes upon the very existence of organized beings, that the most diversified types of animals and plants are everywhere found under identical circumstances.50 The smallest sheet of fresh water, every point of the sea-shore, every acre of dry land, teems with a variety of animals and plants. The narrower the boundaries which are assigned as the primitive home of all these beings, the more uniform must be the conditions under which they must be assumed to have originated; so uniform indeed that in the end the inference would be that the same physical causes can produce the most diversified effects.”
Obviously there is a complete misstatement of the argument here; and the excess of the misstatement appears in the following passage: “The action of physical agents upon organized beings presupposes the very existence of those beings.” Who ever doubted it? “The simple fact that there has been a period in the history of our earth when none of these organized beings as yet existed, and when, nevertheless, the material constitution of our globe and the physical forces acting upon it were essentially the same as they are now, shows that these influences are insufficient to call into existence any living being.”18 Although most readers will demur to the statement that because the material constitution of our globe was “essentially the same” before and after animal life appeared, therefore there could have been no special conditions determining the appearance of Life, the hypothesis of Evolution entirely rejects the notion of organic forms having been diversified by diversities in the few physical conditions commonly understood as representing the Medium. Mr. Darwin has the incomparable merit of having enlarged our conception of the conditions of existence so as to embrace all the factors which conduce to the result. In his luminous principle of the Struggle for Existence, and the Natural Selection which such a struggle determines, we have the key to most of the problems presented by51 the diversities of organisms; and the Law of Adaptation, rightly conceived, furnishes the key to all organic change.
58. In consequence of the defective precision with which the phrase “Medium,” or its usual equivalent “physical conditions,” is employed, several biological errors pass undetected. Haeckel19 calls attention to the common mistake of supposing the organism to be passive under the influence of external conditions, whereas every action, be it of light or heat, of water or food, necessarily calls forth a corresponding reaction, which manifests itself in a modification of the nutritive process. He points out the obverse of this error in the current notion that Habit is solely due to the spontaneous action of the organism, in opposition to the influence of external agency,—as if every action were not the response to a stimulus. Corresponding with the fluctuations in the Medium there must necessarily be fluctuations of Adaptation, and I think we may safely assume that it is only when these fluctuations cease that the Adaptation becomes Habit. This is the interpretation of the phrase “Habit is second Nature,” and is very different from the common interpretation which attributes it to the use or disuse of organs; as if use or disuse were a spontaneous uncaused activity.
59. The organism, simple or complex, is, we have already seen, built up from materials originally derived from the External Medium, but proximately from the Internal Medium. This statement, however, requires some qualification, especially in view of the hypothesis that organized substance was originally created such as we now find it, and not evolved from inorganic materials. Whether this hypothesis be adopted, or rejected, we have the fact that the immense majority of organisms now existing—if not all—are products of pre-existing organisms; and52 therefore organized matter is now mainly, if not solely, formed by organized matter.
We take, therefore, as our point of departure, the protoplasm; this is the first of the three terms of the vital synthesis: Structure, Aliment, and Instrument. The evolution of this is proximately dependent on the pabulum afforded it in the Internal Medium, which is the true nutrient material, and to which what is usually called food stands in an external relation: for between the reception of food and its assimilation by the organite, there is an indispensable intermediary stage, through which matter passes from the unorganized to the organized state. This intermediate is now recognized in plants as in animals. The old belief that plants were nourished directly from the soil and atmosphere can no longer be sustained. The process of Nutrition is alike in both: in both the materials drawn from the External Medium are formed into proximate principles and organic substances. It is daily becoming more and more probable that the inorganic materials, water and oxygen, so freely entering into the organism, never pass directly from the External Medium to the tissues, but have to pass through the Internal Medium where they are changed, so that the water is no longer free, but exists in a fixed state which has no analogue out of the living substance. Only a part of the water can be pressed out mechanically; the rest—that which is already incorporated with the other elements—can only be got rid of in a vacuum and at a high temperature. Oxygen, also, comports itself differently in the tissue; as is proved by the fact that its physiological absorption is markedly different from any chemical oxidation in a dead or decomposing tissue.20 Be this as it may, we know that organic substances have to be unbuilt and rebuilt in the organism; that the albumen of our food never passes directly53 into the albumen of our tissues; any more than the milk drunk by a nursing mother will pass into her breasts, and increase her supply, except by nourishing her.
60. In the First Series of these Problems the term Bioplasm was employed to designate this organized part of the Internal Medium. I was led to adopt it as a corresponding term to that of Psychoplasm, by which I wished to designate the sentient material of the psychological medium. There can be little doubt that the term Bioplasm was an unconscious reproduction of the title of Dr. Beale’s work, which I must have seen advertised. I withdraw it now that I have read Dr. Beale’s work, and see that the signification he attaches to the term is almost identical with Protoplasm. In lieu thereof, the term Plasmode (from plasma, anything formed, and odos, a pathway) may be substituted: it represents the nutrient material on its way to form Protoplasm, which is formative material; while the materials formed may be termed Organites and Products: the organite being the cell or cell-derivative (fibre, tube); the products being the gaseous liquid and solid derivatives of vital processes, which are secretions when they form intercellular substance or return into the plasmode and re-enter the vital circle; excretions when they are rejected, as incapable of further assimilation. The liver-cell will furnish an example of each kind of product. The bile, though containing principles serviceable in the chemical transformations, is for the most part excreted; but besides bile, the liver-cell produces starchy and saccharine principles which are true secretions, and re-enter the plasmode.
61. The organite is thus composed of sap, substance, and product; the organism, of plasmode, tissue, and product. A glance at the vegetable-cell shows it to be constituted by the primordial utricle, or protoplasm, the outermost layer of which is condensed into a membrane,54 or cell-wall, and the cavity thus enclosed is filled with sap. The cell-wall grows as the protoplasm grows, and the protoplasm draws its material from the plasmode. A glance at the blood, the great reservoir of the river of life, shows us plasmode in the serum, and organites in the corpuscles; the one distinguished by sodic salts, the other by potassic salts. The plasmode, or serum, is in a constant change of composition and decomposition, giving up to the various tissue-organites and intercellular plasmodes the requisite materials, and receiving from organites and plasmodes the products of their changes. The serum is fed from the food and the tissues; and it feeds the several plasmodes which bathe the several tissues. Passing into the capillaries, it becomes transformed as it passes through their walls into the intercellular spaces, saturating the acid products of the cell-activities with its alkalies, and furnishing the protoplasms with their needed materials.
62. It will be understood that, although in appearance these stages are sharply defined, in reality they are insensible. But from the analytical point of view we may regard Nutrition as the office of the plasmode, and Evolution as the office of the protoplasm. Although evolution or genesis of form depends on assimilation, it is not a necessary consequence: the plasmode or the protoplasm might preserve such perfect equality in the waste and repair, such complete equilibrium, as not to undergo any development. The ova, for example, which exist in the ovaries at birth are not all subsequently developed; and if with modern embryologists we conclude that there is no replacement of these by proliferation we shall in them have examples of organites remaining unchanged through a period of fifty years.21 But such an equilibrium is perhaps only possible in complete inactivity.
55 63. Again, although the office of the plasmode is primarily that of forming protoplasm, I think there is evidence to suggest that it not only does this, but that some of it is used in the direct development of energy, especially heat and electricity. The various forms of starch and sugar taken in with the food or formed in the liver, certainly do not as such enter into protoplasm. The same with alcohol.
64. It is perhaps in forgetfulness of the artificial nature of analytical distinctions that controversies rage respecting what are called intercellular substances and cell-walls. Now that the wall is no longer regarded as an essential constituent of the cell, but as a secondary formation, two opinions are maintained: first, that it is merely a concentration of the external layer of protoplasm; secondly, that it is a product of secretion from the protoplasm. Both positions may be correct. Certainly in some cases there is no other appreciable difference between wall and protoplasm than that of a greater consistence; whereas in many other cases there exists a decided difference in their chemical reactions, showing a difference of composition. Taking both orders of fact, we may conclude that the cell-wall is sometimes part of the organite, and sometimes product: a blood-cell and a cartilage-cell may be cited as examples of each. And this argument applies to the intercellular substance also.
65. The terms plasmode and protoplasm are general, and include many species. There are different plasmodes for the different tissues, so that we find phosphates of soda in the blood-serum, phosphates of potash in the nerve-plasma, phosphates of magnesia in the muscle-plasma, and phosphates of lime in the bone-plasma; having56 severally to form the specifically different protoplasms of these tissues. Observe, moreover, the gradations of these in respect of their physical state: the blood being the most liquid, the nerve a degree more solid, the muscle still more solid, and the bone almost entirely solid; and since solubility of material is a necessary condition of the chemical changes, we can understand how the blood, the nerve, the muscle, and the bone represent degrees of vital activity: the greater the instability of organized substance, the more active its molecular renovation. Many serious errors result from overlooking the specific differences of protoplasms; among them may be mentioned that very common one of asserting that the ovum of a man is not distinguishable from the ovum of any other mammal, nor the ovum of a mammal from that of a reptile; nay, we sometimes see it stated that the protoplasm from which a mammal may be developed is the same as that which is the germ of an oak. So long as this simply asserts that we have at present no means of distinguishing them by any chemical or physical tests, there can be no objection raised; but it is a serious misconception, which any embryological investigation ought to rectify, to suppose that the ovum is not specific from the first.
66. Between the organites and their plasmodes there is the necessary relation, which corresponds with the relation between organisms and their mediums. Once formed, the organites are arranged side by side, or end on end, into textures or tissues, and these are grouped into organs, every organ being constituted by a collection of tissues, as every apparatus is by a collection of organs, and the organism by the federation of all the parts. We have more than once insisted on the necessity of synthetic interpretation to complete the indications of analysis: which means that no account of vital phenomena is real unless57 it takes in all the co-operant factors, both those of the organism and the medium. Neglect of this canon vitiates Dr. Beale’s otherwise remarkable labors.
THE HYPOTHESIS OF GERMINAL MATTER.
 
67. It may help to elucidate certain important points if I here examine the hypothesis which Dr. Beale has worked out with such patient skill, but with what seem to me such unphysiological results. He deserves, I think, more applause than has been awarded to him, not only for the admirable patience with which he has pursued the idea, but also for the striking definiteness of the idea itself—always a great advantage in an hypothesis, since it gives precision to research. If biologists have paid but little attention to it, this is no doubt due to the theoretical, still more than to the observational contradictions it presents. Histologists dispute his facts, or his interpretations; while other biologists do not see their way in the application of his hypothesis. Respecting all disputed points of observation I shall be silent, for I have myself made no systematic researches in this direction, such as would entitle me to form an estimate of the evidence. But my dissent from the hypothesis is founded on biological principles so fundamental that I should be willing to take my stand entirely on the facts he himself puts forward.22
68. The hypothesis is that nothing in the organism has any claim to vitality except the minute masses of protoplasm (by him called bioplasm), which in the egg represent, he thinks, about the one-thousandth part of the whole mass, the rest being lifeless matter, namely, pabulum, and formed material. This bioplasm is the germinal58 matter out of which, by a process of dying, arise the tissues and humors constituting the formed material—these, with the pabulum which feeds the germinal matter, being all dead material. The germinal matter itself, though living, only lives because there is temporarily associated with it that Vital Force of which we have already spoken (§ 14). In virtue of this association, a particle of matter not exceeding the one hundred-thousandth of an inch in diameter is said to be alive; and, presumably, to contain within it all those manifold powers which the term Life condenses. The pabulum brought under the influence of this Vital Force is transformed into germinal matter which, escaping from this mysterious influence, dies into tissue. Muscle-fibres and nerve-fibres are thus not living parts, nor are their actions vital. So that, to be consistent, we must not speak of the organism as living, but as a dead structure produced by the Vital Force, and set in action by the aid of scattered bits of germinal matter. He has not, I think, stated whether each of these bioplasms has its own Vital Force, so that the organism is the theatre of millions of Vital Forces; or whether it is one Vital Force which animates the whole organic world of plants and animals. But nothing can be less equivocal than his position respecting the lifelessness of every part of the organism except the germinal matter.
69. The germinal matter may be selected as the primary stage of the formed material, the initial point of growth, and thus stand for the pre-eminently distinctive centre of Nutrition; but were we to limit all Nutrition to the germinal matter, as defined by Dr. Beale, and deny the co-operation of all the formed material, we should still not be justified in restricting Life to simple Nutrition. We cannot exclude such phenomena as those of Sensation and Motion, nor can we assign these to the59 germinal matter.23 To suppose this, would be equivalent to saying that the steam which issues from a teakettle is capable of the actions of a locomotive engine. The steam from the kettle is like the steam from the boiler, it has molecular energy, and by this will co-operate in the production of mechanical work, if the mechanism be adjusted to it. The molecular energy of the protoplasm in muscular fibre may be indispensable to the movements of the muscles, but these, and not the protoplasmic movements alone, are muscular contractions. An hypothesis, therefore, which is obliged to declare that muscle-fibre and nerve-fibre are not living, even when active in the organism, seems to me defective at its base. If we view these apart from the organism, they may, like all the other formed materials, be regarded as dead; and no one doubts that epidermis, nail, horn, hair, and bone are dead in this sense, that they cannot live independently, and do not reproduce themselves. But so long as even these form constituents of the living organism, they also are living (§ 42).24 It is only by a misconception of the analytical artifice that so simple a truth could have been missed.
70. But this misconception meets us at many a turn. The Vitalist hypothesis of an extra-organic agent of60 course refuses to regard Life as the expression of all the co-operant conditions; and even opponents of that hypothesis often fall into the same error of principle, when they attempt to explain Life by localizing it in the cells; which is simply a morphological substitution for the once popular doctrine that only the vascular parts were organized, and every part destitute of blood-vessels was dead. This idea seemed supported by the facts of the most highly vascular parts being the most vital, and of a parallelism existing between the vital activity of those organs which when injected seemed almost entirely composed of blood-vessels, as the liver and brain, and those which showed scarcely a trace of vessels, as cartilage and bone; it seemed supported also by the appearance of blood-vessels in all new formations, and by the idea of the blood as the nutrient fluid. Then came the cell-doctrine, and the belief that the cell was the really ultimate morphological element—which may be true—and that “here alone there is any manifestation of life to be found, so that we must not transfer the seat of vital action anywhere beyond the cell,”25—which is very questionable.
71. We have already seen that the cell is an anatomical element, or organite; the organism is but an aggregate of organites and their plasmodes. But Biology, which deals with the organism as a whole, and with functions which are the resultants of all the vital properties, must not be restricted to any single factor, however important. It would assuredly be deemed absurd to say that diamond rings and lead-pencils were the same, because the diamond and the plumbago, which are the specific elements of each, are both the same chemical element,—carbon. The substance is really different in diamond and plumbago, is different in properties, and is, in rings and pencils, united with different substances into61 objects having very different properties. Whatever analysis may discover as to the identities of organic structures, we cannot explain a single vital phenomenon without taking into account the three terms, Structure, Aliment, and Instrument; and whenever a cell is said to be the seat of vital action, these three terms must be implied. In Dr. Beale’s hypothesis the restriction is carried to its extreme; not content with the cell, he withdraws vital action from the cell as a whole, assigning it to the protoplasm and nucleus—cell-contents and cell-wall being, in his view, dead. If it be true that the protoplasm is alone concerned in Nutrition, yet Nutrition is not Life. Occupied mainly with formative processes, it leaves other indispensable processes to other parts. He instances the removal of all the tissues during the metamorphoses of insects:—“new organs and textures are laid down afresh and developed ab initio, instead of being built up upon those first formed.” But to show how he restricts the idea of Life, he adds: “Such complete change, however, necessitates a state of existence during which action or function remains in complete abeyance.”26
The muscles and nerves which are instrumental in this functional life are said to be dead. It is true that the muscle-fibre does not develop fresh fibres. But it is equally true that the protoplasm of muscle does not alone execute muscular contraction. Each has its special office. Hence I reject the idea that formed material is dead. He further says “formed material may be changed, it cannot change itself.” The antithesis is doubly inexact: 1°, nothing changes itself, but only yields to pressure, or reacts on being stimulated; and 2°, all the evidence at hand is against the notion that the formed material is not the seat of incessant molecular change; it is wasted and repaired molecule by molecule. K?lliker properly protests62 against the growing tendency of histologists to deify protoplasm, and to make it the sole seat of vital changes, the cell-wall and cell-products having also, he says, their physiological importance. It is manifestly erroneous to deny vital changes to the red blood-corpuscles on the ground of their no longer containing germinal matter.27
72. The analytical view may separate certain parts as active, and other parts as passive, and thus regard the cells as the seats of vital activity, the intercellular substance as merely accessory and instrumental; but the real or synthetical view must recognize both parts as equally indispensable, equally vital. Take cartilage, for instance, with its enormous preponderance of intercellular substance (formed material), and consider how absolutely impossible any of its uses would be were it reduced to the germinal matter of its corpuscles! And so of all the tissues.
73. If formed material is not to be excluded from the living parts of the organism, neither is the plasmode, out of which the germinal matter arises, since here we have the nutritive changes in their highest activity; and because the property of Nutrition is here most active, the other property of Development is in abeyance. Dr. Beale holds that pabulum necessarily becomes germinal matter; but when we come to treat of Nutrition it will appear that this is not more true than that Food necessarily becomes Tissue: some of it does; but much of it is used up for heat and other purposes.
74. What is true and important in the distinction between germinal matter and formed material is, that from the former onwards there is a gradual process of devitalization, the older parts of every organite and tissue approaching more and more to the state of inorganic matter.63 But to show how vain is the attempt to restrict Vitality to any one out of a complex of co-operant factors, we might set up a chemical hypothesis to the effect that Vitality depends on phosphates, and with it explain the phenomena quite as well as with the hypothesis of germinal matter. For not only is it found that the productive quality of a soil depends on its richness in phosphates, but, as Lehmann has shown, wherever cells and fibres make their appearance phosphates are found, even in the lowest organisms, which, however, contain but little. Phosphates abound in seeds and ova, in muscles and ganglia, and are deficient in the woody parts of plants and the elastic fibres of animals. The infant absorbs phosphates in large quantities and excretes them in small quantities. Nervous activity is accompanied by the consumption of a third more phosphorus than accompanies muscular activity. Phosphates are among the most energetic of organic stimulants. But who would endow the phosphates with Vitality, on the ground of their indispensable presence in all vital processes?
75. Life, as we saw, is the expression of the whole organism. Many of the parts are incapable of manifesting any vital phenomena except in connection with all the rest; and of those parts which may be separated from the organism and continue to manifest some vital phenomena, none are capable of manifesting all. When the connexus of the parts is destroyed the organism is dead. Long after that cessation which we call Death, there are still evidences of Vitality in some of the parts: the heart will continue to beat, the glands will secrete, the hair will grow, the temperature will still be above that of the surrounding medium, the muscles will be excitable; these vital properties are the activities of organized substances, and so long as the state of organization is preserved they are preserved; but the Life, which is the synthesis of all64 the vital properties, vanishes with the destruction of that synthesis.
76. May we not generalize this, and say that every special form of existence, organic or inorganic, is determined by the synthesis of its elements? Atoms are grouped into molecules, molecules into masses, masses into systems. Out of the textureless germinal membrane and the yolk, with no additions from without except oxygen and heat, are developed all the textures and organs of the chick; and this chick weighs no more than the egg out of which it was evolved. The development has been a succession of syntheses—epigenesis upon epigenesis. We may, if we please, regard each organite, as it appears, living its separate life, and each tissue its separate life; but we must not confound under the same symbol modes of existence so widely different as the activities of an organite, and the activities of an organism constituted by millions of organites.
77. If therefore we cannot restrict Life to the processes of Nutrition, Dr. Beale’s hypothesis, whatever value it may have as explaining histogenesis, is quite unacceptable. Neither Vital Force nor Bioplasm covers the whole ground. For the former there is no better evidence than our ignorance of the real synthesis; for the latter the evidence is positive in its nature, but its interpretation is questionable. Dr. Beale selects as the germinal matter those portions of tissue which are susceptible of being deeply stained by the carmine solution, the formed material being only stained in a faint degree; the nucleus and nucleolus are the portions of germinal matter which are most deeply stained; and hence he concludes that the older the matter the fainter will be its coloration. There is no dispute as to the value of the staining process, invented by Gerlach, for the discrimination of chemically different parts of a tissue; and Dr. Beale has made excellent65 use of it in his researches.28 But I altogether dispute the conclusion that the staining process reveals the parts which are exclusively vital; and for this reason: it depends solely on the acid reaction of those parts; and we cannot divorce the acid from the alkaline agencies, both being indispensable. Nay, it has been proved that in the living animal no organized substance can be stained. Lord Godolphin Osborne first discovered, in 1856, that the protoplasm of growing wheat was susceptible of coloration;29 but Gerlach, in 1858, found that this never took place in the animal during life. He kept tadpoles and intestinal worms for weeks in colored fluids, without a single spot becoming stained; although no sooner did these animals die than the staining began. Nor even when he injected the colored fluids under the skin and into the stomach, was the slightest coloration produced.30
To Gerlach’s testimony may be added that of Stein, who, in his magnificent work on Infusoria, says that not only has no foreign substance ever been found in the protoplasm of the Opalina, but in the Acineta, and all the embryos of the higher Infusoria known to him, he has been unable to color the living substance.31 This resistance of the living protoplasm is surely a serious objection to the hypothesis that only those parts of the dead organism which are stained were the truly vital parts. Ranke66 sums up the results of his experiments thus: “They all show that the living cell resists the imbibition of every substance which it cannot assimilate. It is precisely the impossibility of staining the cell that proves this conclusively, since every particle of carmine absorbed would have revealed its presence.”
It is not to be supposed that Dr. Beale was unacquainted with Gerlach’s experiments. He has at any rate so far qualified the statement of his hypothesis as to admit that it is only after death that the germinal matter is stained. “The living matter” (he says, How to Work with the Microscope, p. 107) “possesses an acid reaction, or to speak more correctly, an acid reaction is always developed immediately after its death.” Now, since this acid reaction only presents itself after death, and it is this which is revealed by the carmine, we have no right to conclude that the carmine singles out the vital parts. Every one knows that the living muscle and nerve, when in repose, present an alkaline or faintly neutral reaction, and after excitation this is changed into an acid reaction, which increases with the exhaustion of the tissue. In strict logic, therefore—if we could logically apply such a test—it is the unstained parts that ought to be called vital. But, in truth, alkalinity and acidity are equally indispensable.
78. The main object of my bringing this question forward was to illustrate the danger of being misled by analysis: a danger we shall see to be very serious in psychological inquiries. The aid derived from analysis need never be undervalued; all that we have to bear in mind is that it is only a logical artifice, and that our real explanation must always be synthetic. Because of the tendency to rely on analysis there has been an imperfect discrimination of the profound difference between
67
ORGANISMS AND MACHINES;
 
and while on the one hand the legitimate striving of the biologist to display the mechanism of organic actions has been denounced by a certain school as Materialism and a hateful attempt to “rob Life of its mystery,” there has been on the other hand a misconception of this mechanism, as if its dependent actions were of the nature of machines, that is to say, as if organized mechanisms were strictly comparable with machines constructed of inorganic parts. No doubt the laws of Mechanics are the same in both, for these are abstract laws which take no account of concrete differences. But when elaborate parallels are drawn up between steam-engines and animal organisms, the coal consumed in the one likened to the food in the other, and the force evolved in the combustion in both being the same, there is a complete obliteration of all that specially distinguishes vital activity.
79. Between an organism and a machine there is the superficial resemblance that both have a complex structure, and are constructed of different and dependent parts. But underneath this resemblance there is a radical diversity.32 The arrangement of parts in the organism is more than a juxtaposition, it is a solidarity, arising from the fact of their being all differentiations from a common substance which is a special combination of the three classes of proximate principles. Thus they are not parts which have been put together, but which have been evolved, each out of a pre-existing part, and each co-operating in the very existence of the other. The machine is made of independent and primarily unrelated parts; its integrity depends on the continued preservation of the substance68 of each part; waste is here destruction. The organism is constituted by interdependent and primarily related parts; its integrity depends on the continued destruction and renovation of their substance; waste is a condition of vitality. The actions of the machine are subordinated; the actions of an organism are co-ordinated. The lever moves a wheel, and the wheel in moving liberates a spring, each transmitting a communicated impulse, but otherwise each acts independently—no slight modification in the structure or movement of the wheel will modify the structure or the movements of the lever, no alteration in the tension of the spring will affect the structure of the wheel. But in the organism all are parts of one sympathetic whole; each reacts on each; each is altered by the other. Not a nerve is stimulated, nor a muscle moved, but the entire organism is affected. A condensation here is the cause of a greater imbibition there. The injection of salt or sugar under the skin of the frog’s leg will produce cataract in its eye. The activity of a secreting cell in the ovary, or liver, alters the condition of the brain; the activity of the brain will check the secretion of a gland, or relax the sphincters of the bladder. When we observe the growth of horns, or the appearance of the beard, concomitant with the secretion of spermatic cells—and especially when we observe with these a surprising change in the physical and moral capabilities and tendencies of the organism—we understand how the remotest parts of this mechanism are bound together by one subtle yet all-powerful tie. Nothing of this is visible in a machine. In a machine the material is so far of secondary importance that it may be replaced by materials of various kinds: a pulley may be worked with a hempen cord, a silken cord, or an iron chain; a wheel may be wood, iron, copper, brass, or steel; the actions will in each case be similar. Not so the69 organic mechanism: the slightest variation, either in composition or intimate structure, will affect, and may frustrate the organic activity. It is only in the skeleton that the specific character of the materials may be changed; and here only in the substitution of one phosphate for another in the solid masonry.33
80. Another marked characteristic of the organism is that it has a connexus of actions, the simultaneous effect of a continuous evolution, appearing in stages and ages. And in the animal organism there is a consensus as well as a connexus, through which there is evolution of Mind; and in the Social Organism an evolution of Civilization. This consensus forms an intermediate stage through which the animal actions are sensitive as well as nutritive, and the nutritive are regulated by the sensitive. It is obvious that nothing like this is to be found in a machine; and we conclude, therefore, that any view of the organism which regards its mechanism without taking in these cardinal characteristics must be radically defective. We no more deny the existence of mechanical phenomena in denying that the organism is like a machine, than we deny the existence of chemical phenomena in denying that Vitality is chemical.