The Facts of Sex in Relation to Metabolism. 257 
unfortunately complex and involved style, which is at times 
psychologically dangerous for his readers if not for the author 
himself. 
Mr Ryder lays great emphasis on “cumulative integra- 
tion,’ by which he means that “living matter tends to 
increase beyond the actual physiological requirements of its 
secular existence.” That the power of growth is the essential 
peculiarity of living organisms has been long recognised by 
biologists, but no one has brought the fact into relation with 
the facts of sex in the way that Mr Ryder has done. He 
finds in it the dynamic peculiarity of organisms which has 
made multiplication, morphological differentiation, the 
struggle for existence, and sexuality possible. We do not 
know, however, that Mr Ryder’s cumulative integration 
means anything more than what other biologists call growth, 
and though we agree with him as to the fundamental import- 
ance of the fact, and admire the manner in which he has 
treated of it, we are unable to agree with him (unless he 
means it as a mere prophecy) that “the chemical and 
physiological laws under which growth or molecular integra- 
tion can take place are themselves resolvable into physical 
laws which can be co-ordinated under the principle of the 
conservation of energy.” 
For while we must accept the doctrine of the Conservation 
of Energy as fundamentally true, it remains obscure how we 
are precisely to interpret, in terms of it, the peculiarity of an 
organism that it absorbs energy progressively. 
This question has recently received very careful treatment 
at the hands of a competent physicist—Mr J. Joly of Dublin 
—who, in an interesting paper, entitled “The Abundance 
of Life,’ draws the dynamic contrast between an animate 
and an inanimate system in the following terms :— 
“The transfer of energy into any inanimate material 
system is attended by effects retardative to the transfer, and 
conducive to dissipation, while 
“ The transfer of energy into any animate material system 
is attended by effects conducive to the transfer, and retar- 
dative of dissipation.” 
According to Mr Ryder, “The origin of sex hinges upon 
the decision of how the disproportion between the chromatin 
