THE LAWS OF LIVING PROTOPLASM 27 



turned to nature. No exceptions are known to 

 this law — no organism is exempt from this ulti- 

 mate fate. We may thus say that this law deals 

 with the orderly series of changes, discussed on 

 page 25, which takes the material substance of 

 organisms and returns it to the non-living, un- 

 combined state. Possibly the most conclusive evi- 

 dence that these generalizations are actually laws 

 of living protoplasm is the fact that none of them 

 can be reversed by man, as is the case with the 

 laws governing changes in non-living matter. 



These ten laws of protoplasm rule supreme in 

 man. They express the scope and limitations of 

 his organic activities. He can not set one of them 

 aside. He would not be a man were one of them 

 lacking. Every new human being must conform 

 to them just as every human being has had to con- 

 form to them in the past. 



In the following chapters we shall discuss 

 several of these laws in more detail and indicate 

 their relation to man's education. 



