56 LIFE AND DEATH. 



General Physiology, Cellular Physiology, the 

 Energetics of Living Beings. — General physiology, 

 as was taught by Pfluger and his school, claims 

 to go deeper down than the apparatus, or the 

 organ, or even the cell. As in the case of 

 physics, general physiology endeavours to reach, 

 and really does in many cases reach, as far as 

 the molecule. It is not cellular, it is inoleadar. 

 Already, in fact, the efforts of modern science have 

 succeeded in penetrating into the most general pheno- 

 mena of the living being — those attributable to living 

 matter, or, to speak more clearly, those which result 

 from the play of the universal laws of matter at work 

 in this particular medium which is the organized 

 being. 



Robert Mayer and Helmholtz have the honour of 

 having set physiology in the right road. They 

 founded the energetics of living beings — i.e., they 

 regarded the phenomena of life from the point of 

 view of energy, which is the factor of all the pheno- 

 mena of the universe. 



