1018 ON FORM AND MECHANICAL EFFICIENCY [ch. 



dnalysis by which, for simpUcity's sake, we seek to unravel the 

 intricacies of a complex organism. 



As we analyse a thing into its parts or into its properties, we tend 

 to magnify these, to exaggerate their apparent independence, and 

 to hide from ourselves (at least for a time) the essential integrity 

 and individuality of the composite wh^le. We divide the body into 

 its organs, the skeleton into its bones, as in very much the same 

 fashion we make a subjective analysis of the mind, according to 

 the teachings of psychology, into component factors : but we know 

 very well that judgment and knowledge, courage or gentleness, 

 love or fear, have no separate existence, but are somehow mere 

 manifestations, or imaginary coefficients, of a most complex integral. 

 And likewise, as biologists, we may go so far as to say that even 

 the bones themselves are only in a limited and even a deceptive 

 sense, separate and individual things. The skeleton begins as a 

 continuum, and a continuum it remains all life long. The things 

 that link bone with bone, cartilage, ligaments, membranes, are 

 fashioned out of the same primordial tissue, and come into being 

 pari passu with the bones themselves. The entire fabric has its 

 soft parts and its hard, its rigid and its flexible parts; but until we 

 disrupt and dismember its bony, gristly and fibrous parts one from 

 another, it exists simply as a "skeleton," as one integral and 

 individual whole. 



A bridge was once upon a time a loose heap of pillars and rods 

 and rivets of steel. But the identity of these is lost, just as if they 

 were fused into a solid mass, when once the bridge is built; their 

 separate functions are only to be recognised and analysed in so far 

 as we can analyse the stresses, the tensions and the pressures, which 

 affect this part of the structure or that; and these forces are not 

 themselves separate entities, but are the resultants of an analysis 

 of the whole field of force. Moreover wJien the bridge is broken it 

 is no longer a bridge, and all its strength is gone. So is it precisely 

 with the skeleton. In it is reflected a field of force: and keeping 

 pace, as it were, in action and interaction with this field of force, the 

 whole skeleton and every part thereof, down to the minute intrinsic 

 structure of the bones themselves, is related in form and in position 

 to the lines of force, to the resistances it has to encounter; for by 

 one of the mysteries of biology, resistance begets resistance, and 



