2 FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



eternity of unrest. This is not life as we know 

 it, no organism we know possesses this unqualified, 

 unrestricted, unopposed, infinite affectability, but 

 is on the contrary endowed simultaneously with 

 the physiological counterpart of affectability, viz., 

 physiological insusceptibility. Doubtless the re- 

 sults of the possession of this other property have 

 been to some extent, and, under certain forms, 

 recognised by philosophical biologists, but, as far as 

 I am aware, no one has formally asserted what I 

 now do, that livingness consists in the simultaneous 

 possession by protoplasm of two physiologically 

 opposed properties affectability and insusceptibility 

 or, as I prefer to call the latter, functional inertia. 



I shall presently show how the term arose in my 

 mind as suggested by the inertia of masses, but in the 

 meantime we may speak of this other property in 

 any terms we please so long as they connote phys- 

 iological insusceptibility, non-affectability. These 

 terms do not, however, cover all that is meant by 

 inertia of protoplasm, so that I prefer the latter ; 

 but my point at present is that life, the normal 

 biotonic state in protoplasm, is the result of the 

 simultaneous possession of and due co-ordination 

 between two primary properties. Infinite affect- 

 ability would give rise to infinite activity, ceaseless, 

 unresisted, unresisting eternal action, a mode of 

 life wholly unknown on this planet ; while infinite 

 functional inertia would represent eternal death. 



Throwing this idea into some kind of diagram we 

 should have two wedges side by side, ABC } and A CD, 



