STATIONARY OPEN SYSTEMS ^21 



it. In addition, each such drop had a certain structure 

 peculiar to itself alone. Previously, in the solution, there 

 ^vere only irregularly moving particles of organic substance, 

 all the properties of which were determined simply by their 

 intramolecular structure. In the drops of coacervates these 

 particles were arranged in a definite relationship to one 

 another, giving rise to a certain spatial organisation and 

 there were superimposed on the earlier organic-chemical 

 relationships new colloid-chemical laws which were derived 

 from the interaction of substances of high molecular weight 

 in a multicomponent system. 



The primary formation of these coacervate drops is worthy 

 of special attention because the material basis of life at the 

 present day, protoplasm, has a similar structure and, from 

 a purely colloid-chemical point of view, it would seem, as 

 we have shown above, to be a multiple complex coacervate. 

 From this one must not, of course, draw the reverse conclu- 

 sion that the original coacervate drops, or any which have 

 been produced artificially, are in any way living. The differ- 

 ence is not merely due to the extreme complexity and the 

 far-reaching spatial organisation of protoplasm compared 

 with the great simplicity and lability of coacervate drops. 

 The actual stability of these two systems, their capacity to 

 exist for a long time, is based on completely different prin- 

 ciples. 



Stationary open systems. 



An artificially produced coacervate, or a drop which arose 

 naturally by separating out from organic solution in the 

 waters of the ocean, is in itself a static system. The longer 

 or shorter duration of its existence, which is associated 

 with maintaining the constancy of the properties of the 

 system in time, depends on its being in a thermodynami- 

 cally stable or metastable state. The more stable a coacervate 

 drop, regarded from a purely colloidal point of view, the less 

 likely it will be to disappear as an individual formation after 

 any given lapse of time by amalgamating with other drops 

 or by dissipating itself into the surrounding solution. Unlike 

 this, the coacervate structure peculiar to living protoplasm 



21 



