62 WHAT IS LIFE 



However, biologists and physical chemists today 

 are agreed that life is bound up with colloids, and 

 that the physiological life-processes in fact con- 

 stitute a series of colloidal phenomena. 



Jacques Loeb says: "The material of which living 

 organisms consist is essentially colloidal in its char- 

 acter."^ 



Thus Martin H. Fischer: "Living matter, whether 

 of plants or animals, and under normal or patho- 

 logical conditions, is chemistry in a colloid matrix."^ 



Sir E. A. Schaefer states: "For it is becoming 

 every day more apparent that the chemistry and 

 physics of the living organism are essentially the 

 chemistry and physics of nitrogenous colloids. Liv- 

 ing substance or protoplasm always, in fact, takes 

 the form of a colloidal solution." 



Wolfgang Ostwald writes : "Such particularly com- 

 plicated phenomena as those of life take place in 

 colloid media, and only in such .... The physical 

 and physicochemical conditions necessary for life 

 cannot be more accurately or more concisely summed 

 up than in the words: All life processes take place 

 in a colloid system. The colloid state is the mcnns 

 of integrating biological processes. More correctly 

 expressed, only those structures are considered liv- 



^ Dynamics of Living Matter, 1. 



^ Translator's Preface to Wo. Ostwald's Handbook of Colloid Chemistry, 6. 



