64 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



indefinitely large. All these almost innumerable cells of all 

 kinds and degrees of differentiation and complexity are 

 arranged in a stable, orderly structure in the plant or animal 

 body; and this structure is not stationary but in continual 

 movement and development. The structural order which we 

 have seen characterising the inorganic element or compound 

 is even more characteristic of the vastly more complex organ- 

 ic body with its continuous mobility and transformations. 



A plant or an animal can be considered from the point of 

 view of its structure or its functions, that is to say, the 

 activities performed by the structure as a whole or the parts 

 of which it is' composed. Viewing it merely as a structure 

 we see the same orderly combination and arrangement of 

 parts as in the inorganic body, only the constituent parts 

 and the structural arrangements are far more complex than 

 in the inorganic body. In water, for instance, or any other 

 chemical compound, all molecules are more or less the same, 

 and the body consists simply of a repetition of the funda- 

 mental molecule, and the structures in which the molecules 

 are arranged are likewise of a repetitive character; while in 

 an organic body there may be an indefinite number and 

 variety of cells, and the varieties of arrangements and 

 structures according to which these cells are combined in the 

 several parts and organs of the body may also be indefinite 

 in number. 



But the difference between inorganic and organic bodies 

 lies not only in their structures, but even more in their 

 functions, especially the functions of the organic cells, to 

 which there is apparently nothing corresponding in the 

 inorganic world. About these cells we at present know 

 comparatively little except that their functions and activities 

 are the basis of the functions and activities of the organisms 

 which they compose, all being co-ordinated into a single 

 system of a new type called " life." In the march of Evolu- 

 tion from the inorganic to the organic the cell is the real 

 innovation, to which nothing corresponding in the inorganic 

 has yet been discovered. To use a metaphor, the cell is the 

 point where matter or energy aroused itself from its slumbers 



