126 FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



SUMMARY 



(1) In the preceding pages we have seen, in the 

 first place, that functional inertia is as fundamental, 

 primary and primitive a property of protoplasm as 

 is affectability. 



The one cannot be called more fundamental than 

 the other. The phenomena of vitality cannot be 

 adequately conceived of in terms of one of these 

 properties exclusively. 



(2) While the two aspects of functional inertia are 

 only analogous with the inertia of mass of matter at 

 rest and of matter in motion (momentum) respec- 

 tively, it is extremely probable that molecular 

 inertia in the non-living is the physical starting- 

 point of the inertia of biogens. 



It seems that we must attribute molecular affect- 

 ability and molecular inertia to certain portions of 

 non-living matter, and, therefore, it is extremely 

 probable that protoplasmic inertia has had its genesis 

 in the realm of the non-living. 



If, on the one hand, we thus extend the notion of 

 affectability to the non-living, there is no logical 

 ground for refusing to extend the idea of inertia to 

 the molecules of the living. 



This does not by any means obliterate the broad 

 lines of separation between non-living and living 

 matter : there are other differentia between them, 

 e.g., assimilation, and excretion of CO 2 . 



(3) The significance of the possession of functional 

 / inertia seems, in many cases, to be in the direction 



