94 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



are clearly of a fermentative order when we have 

 to do with many organic infusions; though the 

 phenomena are less obviously of this kind after 

 such solutions have been subjected to very high 

 temperatures, or when we have to do with saline 

 colloidal solutions such as have been used in our 

 experiments. In these latter cases organisms are 

 met with only in small quantities, mixed with some 

 sedimentary matter. These are not active, but 

 slow and smouldering fermentations. In all such 

 changes, as in most vital processes, destructive and 

 constructive reactions are found to be associated. 

 Concerning such constructive processes of a vital 

 order, we have only to remember, as Professor 

 Starling reminds us, that " every day, in all of 

 us, the lifeless material of the food was being 

 taken up and formed into the living constituents 

 of our own bodies." * 



But just as all fermentations are now regarded 

 as immediately due to enzymes or chemical fer- 

 ments (rather than to the "vital ferments' of 

 Pasteur), so are almost all the elementary pro- 

 cesses taking place in living things now being 

 regarded as partaking of the nature of fermenta- 

 tions. In both, as just stated, there is the same 



l Med.-Chir. Trans, vol. xc., 1907, p. 536. 



