The Organism and its Chemistry 81 



of the outer universe, that the industries of all the factories 

 and trading estahlishnients in the world are mere indolence 

 and awkwardness and unproductiveness compared with the 

 miraculous activities of which his lazy bulk is the unheeding 

 center." ^ 



The scientist cannot afford to let the literary quality of 

 this paragraph obscure the truth it expresses. The ac- 

 complishments of organic chemistry in producing substances 

 in the laboratory which it was formerly supposed could be 

 produced onl}' by the living organism, have been so brilliant 

 as to obscure somewhat the significance of the ibict that these 

 artificial products are imitations: Nature made them before 

 man did, and for the ends they originally answered they are 

 still produced only as they formerly were, by the organism 

 itself. 



The fact that the chemist is able to produce what the 

 organism produces in no way derogates from the significance 

 of the fact that the organism does produce them. One can 

 hardly see the import of the point here made until he reflects 

 on the difference between the chemist's ability to produce 

 in his laboratory compounds which are the same as the dis- 

 carded end-products of the living organism's operations, or 

 wliich can be extracted from the dead body of the organism, 

 and the elaboration of substances which constitute the es- 

 sential parts of the organism while it is still living and work- 

 ing. The problem can be put in concrete form by noting 

 that the chemist produces certain substances in his labora- 

 tory by the activities of his brain and hands, and certain 

 other substances in his body by the activities of his digestive 

 organs, glands, muscles, brain and so on ; and then asking 

 how far those produced by the first means can be the same 

 as those produced by the second. May the operations of 

 the first kind be fully substituted for those of the second 

 kind? May the brain and the hands with the appropriate 

 laboratory apparatus ever be able to do the aictual ^york 



