THE SYNTHESIS OF LIVING BEINGS. 55 



accumulated these particles in particular regions. This concen- 

 tration is effected very slowly, very progressively. In other 

 ulterior droplets, these regions have progressively delimited them- 

 selves ; later on, the motions of contraction have gradually ori- 

 ented themselves to one direction rather than another ; still later, 

 this habitual direction of alternate contractions and elongations 

 has determined the formation of the contractile substance into 

 fibrillae arranged in the same direction, and has achieved the for- 

 mation of muscular fibers ; and so on. 



Nature, therefore, has not accomplished the formation of dif- 

 ferentiated elements at the first stroke. It has created living mat- 

 ter, simple and homogeneous ; and this has been called, through 

 a considerable series of ages and generations, to elaborate the dif- 

 ferentiated elements with which we are acquainted. More than 

 Nature can do must not be demanded of the chemist. Those who 

 ask him to create directly the cell and muscular fiber infinitely ex- 

 ceed the absurdity of the persons who would tell the miner, whose 

 business is limited to extracting the mineral, to make an iron-clad 

 vessel with his ordinary tools and methods. He could supply the 

 mineral, but a metallurgist would be needed, with furnaces, re- 

 torts, and reagents, to extract the crude metal from it. After him 

 would have to come, to conceive and draw the plans, the founder, 

 men to manipulate the rollers and the hammers, the turners, the 

 polishers, the fitters, and the builders proper, all of whom would 

 contribute in succession and through a long series of days to the 

 preparation, the perfection, and the starting of the various parts 

 of the great vessel ; and all this under the eye and direction of 

 the engineer who has conceived the plan and ordered the execu- 

 tion of the work, and provided the means of carrying it into effect. 



In like manner an innumerable series of minute workers and 

 minute laboratories have contributed, in conformity with the 

 plan of the Creator, to the differentiation of muscular fiber, of the 

 starch-grain, and of the nervous cell. 



What can be expected of the chemist is thus well defined and 

 outlined : it is to create simple living matter — albumen or proto- 

 plasm — as Nature has created it. We are authorized to believe 

 that he can do this by the progress that has been recently and 

 rapidly made in organic syntheses. 



We have remarked, it is true, that, although the synthesis of 

 albumen has been effected, living albumen, active like that of 

 protoplasm, endowed with a strong leavening power and an in- 

 stability adapted to vital changes, has not been produced. It is 

 not impossible, as Pfluger believes, that non-living and active 

 albumen are isomers — that is, bodies having the same elementary 

 composition, and differing only in the arrangement of the atoms 

 in the molecule. 



