THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 381 



meanings. As Leduc says, living beings which begin with 

 simple and develop into complex shapes are transformers of 

 form. Also they only lose their acquired forms when they 

 cease to live. If, as some of the experiments above referred 

 to tend to prove, form be acquired by the effect of liquid upon 

 liquid, by the action of crystalloids upon colloids and by 

 diffusion through the membranous substances of living bodies, 

 then it is evident that much attention should be bestowed 

 upon the laws which regulate these actions and exchanges and 

 that this author's claim that the physical study of liquids should 

 be the basis of the study of life is not without some measure 

 of justification. Most of the osmotic growths produced by 

 Leduc are of aquatic character but we know with tolerable 

 certainty that aquatic life was the first that appeared upon the 

 earth. In living things the crystalloids, electrolysable and 

 non-electrolysable, as well as the colloids act, Leduc declares, 

 in regard to diffusion in them, after the manner of osmotic 

 membranes and the study of their action upon each other seems 

 capable of revealing much that is still unknown concerning the 

 processes employed by nature in the production of life. In 

 some instances diffusion is shown by this writer as well as 

 by Lebon to display the centres and fields of force exhibited 

 in the well-known electrical experiments of Faraday with the 

 same phenomena of attraction and repulsion. In addition to 

 this, there are examples of periodicity in the interactions 

 of liquids which tend to show analogy with the rhythmical 

 characteristics observable in life and lend a certain amount of 

 support to the contention that in its early stages, after the 

 globe had emerged from the anhydrous state of its origin, the 

 calcium salts, carbonates, phosphates and silicates which enter 

 so largely into the composition of living things become organ- 

 ised under the influence of osmotic pressure. It must be 

 remarked, however, that if this were true, there would seem 

 to be no reason why the same phenomenon should not be 

 produced in the laboratory to-day. Of course if spontaneous 

 generation could ever be proved to occur beyond the slightest 

 doubt in the case of micro-organisms, then biology would have 

 to discover the substances, combinations of substances and the 

 special conditions which would enable an advance to be made 

 in its reconstructions to higher forms of life. But this, even 

 if in germinality of inorganic matter and in osmotic pressure 



