204 LIFE AND DEATH. 



means, as it will in the minds of the physiologists, 

 that the body of the greyhound is the condition of 

 equilibrium of a heterogeneous, anisotropic, material 

 system, subjected to an infinite number of physical 

 and chemical conditions. 



The idea of connecting form, and by that we mean 

 organization, with chemical composition did not arise 

 in the minds of chemists or physiologists. Both have 

 expressed themselves very clearly on this point. 



"We must distinguish," said Berthelot, "between 

 the formation of the chemical substances, the assem- 

 blage of which constitutes organized beings, and the 

 formation of the organs themselves. This last problem 

 does not come into the domain of chemistry. No 

 chemist will ever claim to have formed in his laboratory 

 a leaf, a fruit, a muscle, or an organ. . . . But chemistry 

 has a right to claim that it forms direct principles — 

 that is to say, the chemical materials which constitute 

 the organs." And Claude Bernard in the same way 

 writes: — "In a word, the chemist in his laboratory, 

 and the living organism in its apparatus, work in the 

 same way, but each with its own tools. The chemist 

 can make the products of the living being, but he 

 will never make the tools, because they are the result 

 of organic morphology." 



§ 2. The Acquisition and Re-establishment 

 OF THE Specific Form. 



Acquisition of the Typical Form. — The acquisition 

 of the typical form in the living being is the result of 

 ontogenic work which cannot be examined here. In 

 the elementary being, the plastid, this work is blended 



