PROTOPLASM 51 



or discharging into the surrounding medium these and other molecular 

 complexes which it has elaborated" (Adami 1918, pp. 251-2). "All 

 vital manifestations are manifestations of chemical change in proteidogen- 

 ous matter, are, in short, the outcome of arrangement of that matter 

 with the necessary liberation or storing up of energy" (p. 225). Accord- 

 ingly, life is "a state of persistent and incomplete recurrent satisfaction 

 and dissatisfaction of ... certain proteidogenous molecules" (1908. 

 Vol. I, p. 55). 



Pictet (1918) also associates the phenomena of life with a special 

 structure of the organic molecule. Only the arrangement of the atoms in 

 open chains, he asserts, permits the manifestation of life and its main- 

 tenance; the cyclic structure is that of substances which have lost this 

 faculty; and death results, from the chemical point of view, from a 

 cyclization of the elements of the protoplasm. 



To the theory that the vital processes are bound up with a special 

 form of protein or protein-like molecule many have objected. For 

 example, Hober (1911) has contended that there are present in the 

 organism only those kinds of proteins which may be formed in the 

 laboratory. He urges that life should not be thought of as a single 

 process, or as dependent upon any particular kind of molecule, but rather 

 that it should be looked upon as the result of many correlated processes 

 occurring between many substances under certain conditions. "If we 

 accept this idea," says Child (1915, p. 19), "we must abandon the 

 assumption of a living substance in the sense of a definite chemical 

 compound. Life is a complex of dynamic processes occurring in a certain 

 field or substratum. Protoplasm, instead of being a peculiar living 

 substance with a peculiar complex morphological structure necessary for 

 life, is on the one hand a colloidal product of the chemical reactions, and 

 on the other hand a substratum in which the reactions occur and which 

 influences their course and character both physically and chemically. 

 In short, the organism is a physico-chemical system of a certain kind." 



Harper (1919) is also opposed to theories based upon the conception 

 of protoplasm as a single complex chemical substance, as well as to those 

 which hold protoplasm to be a relatively simple two-phase colloidal 

 system the alveolar and granular theories, for example. "The crude 

 simplicity and general inadequacy of these . . . conceptions . . . 

 have done much to bring the whole subject of protoplasmic organization 

 into disrepute. On the other hand the conception of protoplasm as an 

 aggregate of complex compounds, a polyphase colloidal system or system 

 of systems, seems to do much more adequate justice to the observed 

 facts." 



Conclusion. As stated at the opening of the present chapter, it is 

 with protoplasm that the phenomena of life, in so far as we know them, 

 are invariably associated. The complex behavior of the living organism 



