374 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



could not exist. In other words, if there were not a co-operation 

 between the forces which constitute phenomena in the outer 

 world and those which co-ordinate them in the organism to 

 support what is called life in living beings, there would be 

 no living beings. Life is a condition of this co-operation. 

 The co-operation itself, however, in its completest form, i.e. 

 in the higher animals, is the sequel of the development from the 

 ovum in which it can only be said to be potential, since at the out- 

 set of the animals' existence only a small number of the life pro- 

 cesses are operative which are subsequently brought into effect. 

 So that general arguments tending to prove design should take 

 their starting point at the origin of life, because the subsequent 

 complexities are the results of the potentialities contained in the 

 protozoic substances. 



But if there was only one such substance at the origin, it would 

 be necessary to credit it with an infinity of latent and divergent 

 energies. A multiplicity of definite designs must, on this hypo- 

 thesis, have been potentially included in the original material. 

 But such a concentration of potentiality would probably long 

 remain without the scope of experimental science. 



Although as the physiologist already alluded to declares, 

 there are certain facts revealed especially in the human body — 

 fixed osmotic pressure, the constancy of the quantity of sodium 

 chloride and of sugar, the process of oxidation — which tend to 

 prove that the body with its local lives co-operating in one 

 harmonious whole maintains an equilibrium in its exchanges ; 

 there is scarcely more reason to attribute these to a special 

 regulating power than there would be to assign to the same 

 power the rejection of food taken in excess of assimilative needs 

 by the peristaltic action of the intestines and colon or the 

 prt ^tical invariability of the temperature of the body whatever 

 the temperature of the outer air. It is possible to find many 

 circumstances which appear at first sight to point to guidance 

 but when it is considered that no organism can live independently 

 of the environment (air, water, heat), it seems plain that the 

 appearance is an illusion and that no free principle of life exists. 

 What may be called the chemical subservience of the body to its 

 vital needs is the conditio sine qua non of life but this subservience 

 cannot be completely understood until more light has been 

 thrown upon the precise nature and behaviour of the enzymes 

 which play such an important part in the somatic activities. All 



